The Daily Beast Podcast - Former Trump Org VP: He Didn’t Want Black People To Build His Skyscrapers

Episode Date: December 6, 2020

Donald Trump has a long list of titles he’s accused of being: a liar, scammer, and sore loser to name a few. But racist is a title he earned long before becoming a soon-to-be one-term MAGA president. Former Trump Organization employee Barbara Res says saw it at play multiple times years ago while working as a vice president for the construction arm of the company. Res has a book coming out detailing her work with Trump before he became president, but shares sobering anecdotes with co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Once, Trump reportedly saw a Black construction contractor working on one of his buildings when he turned to Res and said, “I never want to see that again.” What exactly was that? According to Res, I don't ever want to see the young Black kids sitting in my lobby where million millionaires are coming into my apartment. “I don’t want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by black people.” The remarks didn’t end there, though. Res also claims that Trump didn’t want Black kids to sit in his lobbies either, where he said, “millionaires are coming into my apartment.” Res also talks about Trump’s affinity to the mafia, or at least his wannabe mafia boss ruling style, and just how angry he can get over something as trivial as marble color and armoire doors. I thought, “he might hit me.” Will he get angry enough to barricade down in the White House? Res has an opinion on that, too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the new abnormal special bonus episode. We're so excited to have you. Today we have a very special guest with Barbara Reese, who's a longtime executive in Trump's real estate company. And today she's going to talk about the Donald Trump that she knew. Hi, Barbara. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure.

Talk to me about what your job was at the Trump organization. Okay, well, yeah, I talk about my book 18 years. I've liked having my work for 18 years more than you do. about him. I worked for HRA's construction, the first two of those 18 years, built in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, with Donald was the developer and the person in charge. So I got to know him there, and that's where he found me and invited me to be in charge of construction of Trump Tower. So in 1980, I went to the Trump Organization as a vice president in charge of construction of Trump Tower. And I worked on that project for about four years, and it was finishing up. I just

I thought I should leave because he didn't have anything big in the pipeline. And I didn't want to hang around and just, you know, do a few tenant spaces after I had built that whole thing. So I left. I went to work for Arts Mountain, and I came back two years or so later. And I worked from 86 or 87 to 91 as executive VP in charge of all development and construction. And one of the things we were doing was working with some foreign and other American partners on a project in California. So when I let's be physically the organization, I remained on as a consultant, and I still carried a Trump card, and I was on that project for about six, seven years. You talk a lot about, you wrote this book because you really believed that Trump shouldn't have another term. And, okay, well, in my book Caravoges, I, uh, I talk about a lot of different things to have not

come out in the public. Probably because I know them and only I know them. Uh, the things that have we behaved in meetings and, uh, in conversations with me and things like that. One of the big things is probably his racism. I know people call him racist and, um, you know, they cite examples. But in my book, I talk about, um, some things that he actually said to me, that have not ever been published.

One of them would be we had a man working on grinding the concrete on the second floor of Trump Tower, and you could see the man from the street and from the nearby buildings, and he was a black man. And it was an abnormal working house. It was just him out on the project, you know, on the site. And he called me in one of the people from the construction company and said he never wants to see that again. I don't want people knowing thinking that Trump Tower is being built. by black people. And I, you know, I thought that's a pretty profound thing to say and have people

understand. I wanted to get the book out before the election only because I wanted, you know, such the racism is concerned. I wanted people that were of color to understand how important it was for them to get out and vote. And I wanted to show some things that had never been shown before. And I'll go back to the racism. I had an young man interviewed for a physician, and I had to a plan clerk. It's a part-time thing. And I called the architectural school and asked him to send over anyone

that was interested. So I had this young man go to Donald's office at 735 minutes to cross the street from the site. And I was working on the sign and I said, I meet him in the lobby. And I did, and I interviewed him. And it turned out he was a young black architectural student. And he left, and after he left somewhere,

I was about to leave, I guess the receptionist said Donald's looking for. you. So I went back to Donald's office. And again, he said, don't you ever do that again? I don't ever want to see. There's a young black kid sitting in my lobby where million, millionaires are coming in to buy apartments. And, you know, again, it's kind of there. I didn't think people really knew about him. You know, it's one thing to say a Muslim man. And it's another thing to say, I don't want a black man sitting in my lobby. So, you know, there's things like that. And there's more in the book.

There's a ton of speculation about organized crime. I know that these industries tend to be very tied with organized crime. Did you see that? The industry would be tied to the mafia of organized crime. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, it was long known that the concrete industry was pretty much under the control of what you're called a mob or whatever, organized crime. I know that Trump was fascinated by that. I think he liked the structure of it, you know, with the capos and the Don and all that stuff.

But I never got involved or saw him involved in anything having to do with the concrete. But we had a woman who bought an apartment in Tontown. She did a lot of changes to her apartment. I did work for it, including putting in a swimming pool. And while she and, she bought three apartments, she and Trump were very close for a while. After all, it got kind of bad. And she was doing a lot of stuff, and she was not paying him, and he was getting angry about it. Anyway, it turns out that she was very, very close to the head or the business agent for the New York's Team's Union,

which is very much associated with the... So Trump seemed to like talking to this guy and working with this guy, but at the end, the guy held us up, and we had to do something. It's a long story that I have in my book. But he was interested in the mafia and how they worked. And then you can see now that, you know, he sort of assumed that kind of role where he's got, he's like a dawn. And everyone comes to him and, you know, that kind of thing. And he rules with the kind of hand that, you know, a mafia boss would rule with.

There's been a lot of speculation that Russia, you know, bought apartments in the Trump buildings, or that they had some, you know, that there was some kind of money laundering stuff going on there. Did you see that? No, absolutely not. I was strictly in love with the construction. I mean, I knew the people that board of Parmen, and, you know, I was there got a town. It was quite a while before the Russian connection, so to speak. So I have no knowledge of it.

I think everything that went on in Trump Tower was 100% legitimate. That's interesting. Barbara, you obviously saw Donald in times where, he was losing. Right now, everybody's really wondering what it might be like and how he reacts to failure. Do you have any insight on what you think he might be going through right now? Anger is probably the primary emotion he's feeling. I think that he expected to win because he sort of had it set up to win. I mean, he had all these Republicans making changes to go to the local election laws, so that people that, that were...

probably vote for the Biden, we're not going to be able to get their vote in or send their ballot or whatever. And he had all these complaints about the mail imbalance, and he hired that Detroit, I think that's his name, to run the post office. And they made this attempt at doing away with the mail imbalance and making sure that they didn't arrive at the post office. I mean, it was pretty, pretty obvious what he was doing. So he thought, I think, that he had that election in the bag because not everyone was going to get to vote. One way or another, the vote wouldn't be counted or, you know, the mail wouldn't be delivered on time, that kind of thing.

And I think that he thought that would deliver for him the election. So he was very, very angry when it seemed like he lost because he was expecting to win. That's my thought. He's probably a little bit despondent, but I think that his anger is so much of a vital emotion that he's not dragging around in the White House. I think he's screaming. I think more than that, he's screaming.

The thing with Barr yesterday probably infuriated him terribly. Is he prepared to make a loss? No, he's not. He never made a loss before, and he's not going to make a loss now. Whatever happens, he will spin it. And, you know, he's already got the big spin on his big election. He's got half the country believing that. I mean, it's beyond my realm of rationale that people could buy this stuff

when, you know, state after states there was no fraud and, and bullying bosses, there were no four, and the apiresses, there were no fault. But he's keeping his base intact, and he knows that he's going to want them for the future. And what he does with them is what we'll see. What does his anger look like? You know, there's this, like, typical picture of, like, a Northeast man who's mob affiliate that's punching desks and, you know, breaking things. Like, what does his anger look like in the past when you've been around it?

Okay, I'll give you a perfect example. It's in my book, Towers. We were working in the Plaza Hotel, and we had done a lot of changes and, you know, upgrading and stuff like that. New rooms, some just paint and furniture. They had things moving walls and take the big spot, a lot of stuff. So we had, we're ready for dogs to take a look at what we called the sample room, which would be a typical room. One person room or, you know, a double room, but not, you know, a suite or anything like that. Sweets were different.

He came in, and he wasn't not in a good mood. I walked over with him that thing. and I could tell he wasn't in a great mood to begin with. And I met the decorator and someone else. I can't remember exactly what it was. And someone from security, that would be let us into the rooms. And he didn't like what he saw. And he started the first thing, you know,

he didn't like the furniture and he started cursing out of honor. He actually, there was an on the law, which was supposed to have a TV set in it. And instead of the doors opening light doors, they sort of work like pocket doors. So they went back into the phone. and you didn't see any doors. He didn't like that to begin with, but he opened out the door and he said, wait, what is this?

What is this? Using post words and crap and stuff like that. Pulled the door out and for some reason it didn't come out all the way and he shook it. He pulled that door right off the armour. And I never saw anything like that. He was so angry. We went to the bathroom and we had done this green marble,

which is from China. And it looked very pretty with the white pictures, but it was not like Vermont Green, what we had in the other. and mobbed from town. And he goes in there and he says, what is this blank? And I said, you know,

Mr. Greenland, who told you to do this? You're making me look like blank, yelling and screaming. And I said, yeah, I'm back at him, of course. You prove this talent. This is what you want.

This is the cheapest woman. I'm going to blame it on me. And he was so angry that it encouraged me. I say this in my book, but he might hit me. Oh, wow. That's how angry. Because of the marble?

Because he said, yeah, I wish I could use the words that he used, but you're making it look like an idiot, and this is absolute garbage, and, you know. But I think, you know, things are going on in his life, but I don't think this is the only thing that was on his bond. I think he had stuff going on with the banana, and I think that he had financial stuff going on with the casinos and stuff like that. So he just came in, had a bad mood, and he just went crazy. He went crazy.

But I've seen him loose it other times, too. Did you get the sense that he has been violent before? Violent, no. But you felt like he could be. It was just that moment in time. It was so angry. I never saw anyone angry like that. It was shaking.

And why was he angry? Because the marble? No, it was all the furniture. He didn't like the furniture. He didn't like the room. He didn't like the marble. You know, he saw this as a refusion on him. When people walk into one of his rooms or one of the rooms,

or one of his brothers or whatever. They see Trump. He is Trump. And he didn't want that green marble being Trump because it was, it didn't look to his satisfaction. He was in a bad mood to begin with. So it just helped him get more in a bad mood. And yeah, it was because of the marble.

And there's a lot of speculation that he uses substances. Did you see anything to support that or no? Well, not that, you know, I'm not even sure it occurred to me at the time, but it was very very moody. I mean, you know, watch one minute he was flying on the next minute he was angry or depressed or whatever. I know that he went to a doctor that a lot of people used it. I ended up using myself for diet information, diet guns, and who dispensed pills like they were candy. Maybe he was getting something from there.

But I didn't have any direct knowledge of him taking any substances. Do you think he'll have to be dragged from the White House or you think he'll leave on his own? You know, I don't know. He's playing with the military, and I think people are speculating that he might be trying some kind of a coup. And if he did that, which I don't think he could do, it's not possible. But then he would say, but otherwise, no, he's not going to be drunk. No, absolutely not.

The visual of that would be too much for him. You think he'll sort of go to Mar-a-Lago. Well, it depends on whether or not there are indictments against him. And I think if there's a chance of him going to jail, meet before his presidency is over. Yeah. And leave the country. Oh, really? Well, yeah. I mean, if it looks like she's going to go to jail, absolutely, sure.

All right. Thank you so much. This was really great. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest, and he's the Rick Wilson.

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