Former Trump Organization VP: Trump said he didn't 'want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by Black people'

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Former Trump Organization VP: Trump said he didn't 'want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by Black people'
President Trump is seen at the White House on November 26, 2020.Erin Schaff - Pool/Getty Images
  • Barbara Res, a real-estate executive who worked for President Donald Trump before he took office, said he once complained to her about seeing a Black construction laborer working on one of his buildings.
  • "I don't want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by Black people," Res said Trump told her.
  • Res also recalled Trump saying he didn't want Black people seen in his building lobbies.
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A real-estate executive who worked at the Trump Organization says President Donald Trump once complained about seeing a Black construction laborer working on one of his buildings.

Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization vice president, told a Daily Beast podcast that Trump said, "I never want to see that again."

"I don't want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by Black people," Res recalled Trump telling her.

Res also described Trump as saying he didn't want Black people in his building lobbies. "Millionaires are coming into my apartment," she said Trump once told her.

Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization immediately responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.

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Res, who oversaw construction and development for the Trump Organization, is the author of a book called "Tower of Lies: What My Eighteen Years of Working With Donald Trump Reveals About Him."

In an interview with Business Insider last month, Res said Trump refused to listen to expert advice, hired unqualified people based on how loyal to him they appeared, disrespected his employees, and used racist language.

Res described once inviting a Black man to interview for a clerk position under her. The man waited in the Trump Tower lobby before the interview began. Trump called her into his office after the man left, she told Business Insider.

"I went in to see Donald and he was livid," Res said, adding that he shouted at her.

"Don't you ever do that again," she recalled him saying. "Don't ever do that again. I don't want Black kids sitting in my lobby where millionaires are coming in to buy apartments."

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Over the nearly four years of Trump's presidency, reporters and family members have documented and shared other examples of racist language they say he's used in the past.

Trump's niece, Mary, for example, said in July that her family frequently used racist and anti-Semitic slurs when she was younger.

"Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the N-word or use anti-Semitic expressions," she said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Trump as president has often referred to the novel coronavirus, which originated in China, as the "kung flu."

And two years ago, Trump referred to a group of African nations as "shithole countries." Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa's governing African National Congress, said his remarks were "really, really derogatory, and highly offensive." Nigeria's foreign minister called his remarks "deeply hurtful, offensive, and unacceptable."

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