Trump Casino Allegedly Removed Black Employees Before Donald and Ivana’s Arrivals, Former Worker Says

The New Yorker published an article on August 31, 2015, detailing a disturbing practice carried out in Donald Trump's Atlantic City casinos during the 1980s. Former employee Kip Brown revealed that black employees were hidden whenever Trump and his then-wife Ivana visited the casino.

"When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back." Brown, who worked at Trump's Castle, now the Golden Nugget, recalled. Whether this directive was issued directly by Trump or casino management remains unanswered, per Complex. However, it highlights a troubling pattern that critics claim has persisted throughout Trump's career and public life. John O'Donnell, the former president of the Trump Plaza Casino, detailed in his memoir that Trump once expressed his displeasure with black people handling his finances, saying, “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.”

This is not an isolated incident; rather, it is part of the larger pattern of Trump's racial discrimination, as per The Guardian. This pattern can be traced back to the early 1970s, when Trump Management Corporation, led by 26-year-old Donald Trump, faced a lawsuit from Richard Nixon's Department of Justice for racial discrimination in housing. The suit claimed that the company refused to rent to black people and used deceptive tactics to keep them out, eventually settling "without an admission of guilt." These troubling revelations do not stop at the workplace; they also include Trump's public statements and actions. In the aftermath of the Central Park Five case, in which five black teenagers were wrongfully convicted of assaulting a jogger, Trump ran advertisements calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1989. Even after they were exonerated in 2002, Trump refused to admit his role in perpetuating a false narrative, sticking to a position that aligned him with "white law and order."

The birtherism conspiracy theory, in which Trump baselessly questioned Barack Obama's birthplace, illustrated Trump's involvement in racially charged debates. While Trump eventually accepted Obama's long-form birth certificate as authentic, his support for the conspiracy theory displayed a willingness to exploit racial tensions for political gain. The 2016 presidential campaign was a turning point moment in the investigation of Trump's racially divisive rhetoric. From advocating for a ban on Muslim immigration to labeling Mexican immigrants as "rapists," Trump's campaign was marred by racially charged statements that energized his base while infuriating many Americans. Trump's refusal to condemn white supremacists in the aftermath of the Charlottesville clashes, as well as his reported remarks disparaging Haitians and Nigerians, made his racial bias very obvious.

This article originally appeared 11 months ago.