As Donald saw it, and I remember him voicing a version of this idea within the inner circle of his executives on several occasions
: “Blacks don’t want to live with whites, so why isn’t it OK for whites not to want to live with blacks?” I know that in similar fashion he despised the affirmative action guidelines (50 percent female and 30 percent minority at every level) we were required to implement to maintain our gaming license. He would say it was not realistic and a waste of money to train people who did not have the ability.
I recall one busy Saturday night, walking the casino floor with him, when he saw what he considered an inordinate number of black customers. “It’s looking a little dark in here,” he calmly stated. It was his way of telling me to limit our charter bus programs in urban neighborhoods. I ignored him and continued to run the business in the best interest of Donald, the bondholders and the employees.
His prejudices didn’t stop at the color of one’s skin. Everyone was subject to judgment. It could be their ethnicity, their gender, their religion. It could be their social “caste.” Like the time we were speaking of the fiancée of one of our executives who had died in a tragic helicopter crash while returning to Atlantic City from a news conference with Donald in New York. The woman happened to be a cocktail server at the casino. Donald’s take was, “Poor girl. Her ticket out was Jon. She got lucky. Now she will be serving drinks the rest of her life..
Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day
, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by “looking like a f------ Puerto Rican.”
In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it.
The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on,
“Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
