Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore) and Kwame Jackson (CNN)
Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen alleges that the president called a contestant on The Apprentice a “Black fag.”
Cohen, commonly known as the president’s “fixer” during his time with Trump, made the allegation in his new book, Disloyal: A Memoir.
He claims that Trump ensured that Jackson Kwame, a gay, Black man, would not win the NBC reality show’s first season in 2004.
“There was no way I was going to let this Black fag win,” Trump allegedly said, according to Cohen.
Kwame, a Harvard graduate and businessman, was the runner-up of the first season, after Trump opted to fire him and instead hire Bill Rancic, future husband of E! News host Giuliana Rancic.
“Trump reminisced to me about Rancic, who had been in a head-to-head with another contestant, Kwame Jackson,” Cohen wrote. “Kwame was not only a nice guy, but also a brilliant Harvard MBA graduate. Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Kwame. ‘There was no way I was going to let this black fag win,’ he said to me.”
Cohen claimed that Trump frequently made racist comments off-camera: “As a rule, Trump expressed low opinions of all Black folks. What he said in private was far worse than what he uttered in public.”
Trump has previously been accused of using racial slurs during filming of The Apprentice and spin-off The Celebrity Apprentice, which he hosted between 2004 and 2015,
Magician and entertainer Penn Jillette, of duo Penn & Teller, told Vulture in 2018 that Trump would “say racially insensitive things that made me uncomfortable” while filming Celebrity Apprentice in 2012.
“I don’t think he ever said anything in that room like ‘African-Americans are inferior’ or anything about rape or grabbing women, but of those two hours every other day in a room with him, every 10 minutes was fingernails on chalkboard,” Jillette said.
Former Trump political aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, who also appeared in the first season of The Apprentice alongside Jackson, accused Trump of using a racial slur in reference to Jackson while filming their season.
At the time of her accusation in 2018, Jackson told Variety, “Hard pass on all things Omarosa, no thank you. By me commenting or you covering the story, it simply adds fuel and attention to tomfoolery.”
However, later that year, after Cohen told Variety that Trump had referred to Jackson using a homophobic slur, Jackson told Newsweek that he was “definitely not surprised” by the alleged slur.
“Did it hurt me personally? Not in the slightest,” he said. “I have a reasonably thick skin, and I have worked in corporate America. I have been a black man for 44 years in America, and I know what that means, and I know what comes with the territory.”
Last week, Cohen appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, where he said that Trump hated former President Barack Obama and frequently made racist remarks about him, The Hill reports.
“His hatred for Barack Obama is plain and simple: he’s Black, he went to Harvard Law, he graduated at the top of his class, he’s incredibly articulate, he’s all the things that Donald Trump wants to be,” Cohen said. “And he just can’t handle it. So what do you do if you’re Donald Trump and you can’t handle it? You attack it.”
Trump frequently touted the false conspiracy theory that President Obama was not a U.S. citizen as part of attempts to delegitimize his presidency, including a 2011 appearance on The View in which he asked the president to “show his birth certificate.”
In 2018, former First Lady Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir Becoming that she would “never forgive” Trump for spreading “reckless innuendos” about her family that endangered their safety.
“The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly,” Obama wrote. “But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks.”
In a statement, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany disputed the claims made in Cohen’s book, saying, “Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies.”
"I was really into politics at a very young age," says Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and an MSNBC political analyst. "I can't remember what they were called, but you'd get those kid magazines about politics that would come to your school, and I remember always really being drawn to them, and reading them and wanting to know more. I always knew lots of weird facts about politics and geography as a little middle school nerd."
Raised in St. Louis until fourth grade, when his family relocated to Littleton, Colorado, Miller became enmeshed in conservative politics at a young age, taking various campaign jobs throughout his career as a former Republican strategist. He jokes that his success at handicapping political races dates back to the 1992 election, when he won a $1 wager after betting his grandmother that then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton would unseat sitting president George H.W. Bush.
The Turning Point USA co-founder, who once declared Pride a “sin” and opposed LGBTQ rights, was killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed by an assassin's bullet during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday, Sept. 10.
The 31-year-old was the co-founder of Turning Point USA, an organization advocating for conservative politics and education on high school and college campuses.
At the time of the shooting, Kirk, who appeared on campus as part of his "American Comeback Tour," was taking questions from people in the crowd while seated at a "Prove Me Wrong" table in the Sorensen Center courtyard on campus, according to The Associated Press.
Laura Loomer, the far-right influencer with close ties to President Donald Trump, claimed during a deposition in her defamation lawsuit against HBO that sources close to the former president told her U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is gay.
Loomer is suing the network over comments by comedian Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher, who joked that she had an affair with Trump. She alleges Maher's on-air remark about her "sleeping with Trump" -- echoing a rumor circulating at the time -- cost her a job in the Trump administration and the political influence that would have come with it. HBO has argued that Maher's comment is protected under the First Amendment, just as Loomer's own inflammatory remarks are shielded when she targets her political enemies.
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