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.”
“One of my first loves was the political arena,” says Jeremy Moss, the openly gay president pro tempore of the Michigan Senate and Democratic nominee for Congress in Michigan’s 11th District.
“I remember in my household growing up, we had the news on and watched Peter Jennings every single night,” he says. “I was in a household that was very on top of current and newsworthy events in our state and in our country. I literally -- and this is no joke -- was the first grader that could name every president in the order they served.”
Moss recalls being six years old and captivated by the 1992 presidential debate at Michigan State University, which gave it a local connection for him. He watched Bush, Clinton, and Perot “making a pitch to America,” each hoping voters would choose his vision for the country.
Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth following reports that transgender service members forced out of the military under President Donald Trump's ban have not received separation pay they are owed.
Trump implemented a more limited ban during his first term, generally requiring transgender troops to serve according to their assigned sex at birth and barring medical transition. The policy exempted certain service members already serving openly or diagnosed with gender dysphoria before it took effect.
But after returning to office last year, Trump issued an executive order aimed at removing nearly all transgender personnel from the military, reinforcing a separate order refusing to recognize transgender identity as valid.
President Donald Trump used an anti-transgender slur in an October 5 social media post attacking Annie Andrews, South Carolina's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In the Truth Social post, Trump paired Andrews' first name with a rhyming anti-transgender slur.
"Annie 'Trannie' Andrews is running against our wonderful Darline Graham for the Senate in South Carolina," Trump wrote in an endorsement of Graham. "Darline is a High Quality person, maybe the Highest, and Annie Trannie is not, in particular, as it pertains to representing the Values of the Great People of South Carolina -- She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, High Taxes, a Weak Military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away -- In other words, she is against our Great Second Amendment!"
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