Following reports that un-aired footage from Trump’s The Apprentice shows the Republican presidential nominee making far worse comments than those on the Access Hollywood tapes, alums and employees from the show have stepped forward to tell their stories.
A white sound engineer told BuzzFeed News that Trump repeatedly called him a “fucking monkey.”
“Micing him was honestly the most abusive, humiliating experience of my 15 years as a sound engineer. He treated me like I wasn’t a human being,” he said. The engineer added that when he first met Trump, the real estate mogul refused to shake his hand. Instead, Trump turned to an assistant and asked, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, who’s this f–king monkey?” The engineer added that the comment was not racially charged.
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Alums of the show have spoken out about Trump’s behavior as well. “I did hear what would be in a workplace considered sexist language or inappropriate language, but that was pretty normal, actually, and almost expected,” Marshawn Evans, a season four “Apprentice” contestant, told The Hollywood Reporter. Randal Pinkett, winner of The Apprentice‘s fourth season, even recalled Trump asking him which of his fellow contestants he would sleep with.
Another source, who worked for the show and wished to remain anonymous, added that Trump repeatedly talked down to female contestants and focused on their looks, while men were treated like colleagues.
“When we first started shooting and there were still a lot of contestants and you don’t necessarily know all their names well, he definitely would describe the girls by their bodies and their physical attributes,” the source told THR, adding that he talked to female contestants “like children.”
Pinkett, the show’s first African-American winner, also stated that Trump asked him if he wanted to share his prize, something he’d never asked another contestant. He recalled Trump telling US Weekly that he felt Pinkett was lazy and that runner-up Rebecca Jarvis was beautiful.
“Leading up to my finale, Donald was interviewed by Us Weekly, and when the interviewer asked what he thought about the two of us, he said that he thought I was lazy and he thought that she was beautiful. It just felt like a really bizarre choice of words to call the black guy lazy and to call the woman beautiful,” he said.
Pinkett’s experience working for Trump Entertainment Resorts wasn’t much better. The season four winner said he experienced institutional racism while employed for the company:
“There were no executives of color in the organization. I never sat in a room with another person of color over my entire year there other than the person I saw in the mirror…All of that behavior simply predicated the behavior that we’ve seen in recent years and on the campaign trail. That’s Donald.”