Barbara Res, a longtime employee of Donald Trump, has recalled the culture of racist jokes that was present during her 18 years working for The Trump Organization.
Res, who was the organization’s vice president in charge of construction, told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Thursday that “it was a different period of time and words like the N-word were used frequently; they aren’t ever used now.”
Res said she did not remember Trump ever using the racial slur, which he has long been rumored to have said during the taping of his reality TV show “The Apprentice.” But she recollected “hearing jokes, there were always black jokes going back and forth and he told them too.”
Trump was also the first person to tell Res the expression “once you go black, you never go back,” she added. “First time in my life I heard it was Donald that said it and in a joking way. So I mean there was certainly a lightheartedness about not only black people but Jews and things like that.”
Baldwin asked Res, during their discussion about former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony claim that Trump was “a racist,” if “no one in the room when Donald Trump or others would make these inappropriate jokes would say ‘sir, not appropriate.’”
Res replied that “people didn’t do it at that time.”
“Everybody joked and, I’m gonna be honest about it, people laughed,” she said. “This was 1981, 82, 83 and that’s almost 40 years ago. And people sort of laughed.”
“And by the way they weren’t as mean-intended back then,” Res added. “It was more less kinda like racism was like accepted. It wasn’t like ‘oh I hate black people,’ it’s just this is the way people are and this is the way we talk.”
Check out the full interview here: