A former executive of the Trump Organization who was the President’s employee for over a decade recalled an atmosphere of racism and anti-Semitism at the company, Newsweek reported.
The former vice president of the Trump Organization, Barbara Res appeared in an interview on CNN with anchor Brooke Baldwin.
“You’ve known Donald Trump off-and-on for years and years. What’s true?” said Baldwin, as she referenced the claims that Trump is racist made by his ex-attorney Michael Cohen.
“It’s hard for me to say he’s racist and then admit that I worked for him all that time. I mean it was a different period of time and words like the n-word were used frequently,” Res replied.
Baldwin asked if Trump personally said such terms, and Res said she didn’t remember.
“I remember hearing jokes, there were always black jokes going back and forth, and he told them too. You know the expression, ‘Once you go black you never go back?’ The first time I ever heard it, it was Donald that said it, and in a joking way. So there was certainly a lightheartedness about not only black people but Jews and things like that.”
“They weren’t as mean-intended back then… Kind of like racism was like accepted. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I hate black people’. It’s just this is the way people are,” she added.
The White House did not immediately respond when contacted by Newsweek.
During his lengthy testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Cohen, Trump’s long-term lawyer, issued scathing remarks about racist comments the President has reportedly made.
“He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘shithole’. This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States,” Cohen told the panel. “While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. He told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid,” Cohen said.
Trump has been accused of promoting racism for actions including pushing the Obama birther conspiracy, disparaging Mexicans and failing to condemn white supremacists.
Be the first to comment