Former Trump Organization vice-president Barbara Res says that Donald Trump often reveled in the company of people who made jokes about black people, adding that sometimes “he told them too,” according to HuffPost .
Res, who has not shied away from sharing embarrassing details about the president during her time as his company’s VP, spoke to CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Thursday. During her appearance, Res claimed that people would often use the N-word around Trump at the time, and although she had never heard him utter the word himself, he would not mind others using it.
“It was a different period of time and words like the N-word were used frequently; they aren’t ever used now,” Res told Baldwin.
Trump is rumored to have used the N-word during the taping of his reality show, The Apprentice, and Res recalled that with him around, “there were always black jokes going back and forth and he told them too.”
Res also said that she had heard the expression “once you go black, you never go back” for the first time in her life from Trump himself.
“First time in my life I heard it was Donald that said it and in a joking way. So I mean, there was certainly a lightheartedness about not only black people but Jews and things like that.”
Barbara Res recalled “hearing jokes, there were always black jokes going back and forth and he told them too.” https://t.co/rVSOwJTY6N
— HuffPost (@HuffPost) March 1, 2019
“You know the expression ‘Once you go black, you never go back?’ The first time in my life I heard it, it was Donald [Trump] that said it.” Barbara Res, who worked with Trump for 18 years, describes the workplace environment under the future President. https://t.co/LpvXmC6faR pic.twitter.com/0S5nRj7a6X
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) February 28, 2019
Donald Trump’s views about black people are once again the center of attention with his former fixer, Michael Cohen, telling Congress on Wednesday that he had no doubt that Trump was a “racist”. His opening statement was a ferocious rebuttal of everything Trump stands for, and he later added that the president had made jokes about black people in his company. He also claimed that Trump once told him that black people were “too stupid” to vote for him.
“Today, I am here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump,” Cohen said in his opening statement, according to The Guardian .
“I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience. I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”
The Trump administration is still reeling from the revelations made by Cohen, but there have been efforts at damage limitation. Trump has tried to steer the dominant media narrative away from Cohen’s testimony to North Korea, but media appearances by people who know him – like his former Trump Organization VP Barbara Res – have added to the surrounding controversy.