Forgive me if I’m cynical about humanity. I just stumbled into sunshine from the darkness of a screening of The Apprentice, the stunning fictional-yet-fairly-factual film about Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn.

That’s Roy Marcus Cohn, my odious cousin.

These 120 minutes in the theater unearthed so many memories that now I’m reeling from PTCSD: Post Trump-Cohn Stress Disorder.

With a bit of artistic license, The Apprentice illuminates the truths that several documentaries have depicted. We see Roy molding Trump out of a lump of formless clay. We watch Trump wallow in Roy’s world of chicanery and bribery, bold-type gossip pages and bald-faced lies.

I’ve long thought of Trump as Roy’s acolyte, his disciple. But “The Apprentice?” Ah. Nice wordplay.

Let’s pause for a personal disclaimer-plus-trigger warning.

Roy and I shared one trait: devotion to the bubbly, optimistic Libby Marcus — my Grandma Libby, Roy’s Aunt Libby. Libby was staunchly loyal to family. No matter if you were an awkward dork (me) or an indicted perjurer (Roy) or a disbarred attorney (Roy) or a possible murderer (Roy). Or even if the IRS slapped liens on your property for evading millions of dollars of taxes (Roy again).

It’s easy to loathe everything Roy represented: The self-hating homophobia. The peculiar antisemitic behavior of a Jewish person a couple of generations removed from the shtetl. The flag-waving, faux family-values conservatism, drenched in hypocrisy.

Speaking of hypocrites: In the heady heyday of the 1980s, I briefly met The Donald several times at Cousin Roy’s birthday parties. That was when the self-proclaimed Real Estate Tycoon was overleveraging, putting himself on the path to bankruptcy. He was bamboozling bankers and journalists — as Roy manipulated him like a marionette.

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