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      Donald Trump had lots of negative opinions about felons. Now he is one.

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      Donald Trump has spent years complaining that American police and the criminal legal system should be “very much tougher”, arguing that some criminals should not be protected by civil liberties, police should rough up suspects and a much wider range of people should face the death penalty for breaking the law.Now that the former president has been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, Trump is arguing that the US legal system is out of control. “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said on Friday.Here’s a recap of some of Trump’s notable comments about “felons” and “criminals” – and a look at how the convict himself has actually been treated.Trump’s opinion: police officers should rough up suspects as they’re arresting themAddressing an audience of law enforcement officers on Long Island in July 2017, Trump told officers, “Please don’t be too nice”, and he mocked the idea of police making an effort to protect suspects’ heads as they’re put in the back of a police vehicle.“When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over [their head],” Trump said, pantomiming the gesture. “Like: ‘Don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head.’ I said: ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’”How Trump has been treated:On his way to his arraignment in the New York hush-money case last April, Trump was not getting roughed up by officers. He was instead posting angrily on his own social media platform about his feelings about his case. “Heading to Lower Manhattan, the Courthouse,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Seems so SURREAL – WOW, they are going to ARREST ME.” Trump arrived to be fingerprinted and processed via his own eight-car motorcade.Trump also did not get roughed up on his way to jail last August in Fulton county, Georgia, where he faces criminal charges in a separate case related to interference of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden. Instead, his lawyers reportedly arranged for him to surrender at the Fulton county jail during prime-time cable television viewing hours.View image in fullscreenAfter flying to Atlanta on a private plane, and being processed in an unusually fast 20 minutes, Trump did have to take a mug shot at the jail, which he later said was “not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong”.Trump’s opinion: allowing defendants to be released before their trials is dangerousIn 2010, 16-year-old Khalief Browder was arrested on suspicion of stealing a backpack. The New York teen maintained his innocence, but his family could not afford the $3,000 it cost to bail him out of jail while he awaited trial.Browder ultimately spent three years incarcerated on Rikers Island before facing trial. Suffering from delays, physical abuse and solitary confinement, Browder attempted suicide multiple times. His horrific story would galvanize calls to end cash bail in New York state and nationwide.But Trump has stridently opposed abolishing cash bail. And when New York state embraced cash bail reforms designed to keep more people out of jail while presumed innocent and awaiting trial, Trump criticised the move as dangerous.“So sad to see what is happening in New York where Governor Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio are letting out 900 Criminals some hardened and bad onto the sidewalks of our rapidly declining because of them city,” Trump tweeted in 2019. “The Radical Left Dems are killing our cities.”How Trump has been treated:The former president had enough money to keep himself out of jail (and continue running for a second presidency) while awaiting his criminal trial in Georgia, though a judge there set his bail at $200,000. (Working through bail bond companies, as Trump did, defendants there typically pay about 10% of the total bail amount upfront.)Trump’s opinion: criminals should be denied civil liberty protectionsIn 1989, after a white woman was raped and bludgeoned while jogging in Central Park, five Black and Hispanic teenagers were falsely accused of the crime, and they said they were coerced into confessing their purported guilt during police interrogations. Trump took out full-page ads in multiple newspapers calling for the city to “unshackle” police from “the constant chants of police brutality” and suggesting the juveniles should be executed for the heinous crime.“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY,” the advertisements read. “Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS.”Yusef Salaam, who was 15 years old at the time, later said that Trump’s advertisements had left the accused boys and their families frightened: “I knew that this famous person calling for us to die was very serious.”View image in fullscreen“I want to hate these muggers and murderers,” Trump had written in the ad. “They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”Even after the Central Park Five were completely exonerated, and the city eventually paid them a multimillion-dollar settlement for taking years of their lives through imprisonment, Trump refused to apologize for his high-profile comments – or to consider the men as innocent.“Why did they all sign confessions and how many people did they mugg [sic] that night in the Park?” he tweeted in 2013. “What about their criminal records?”How Trump has been treated:When Trump was arraigned in New York in the hush-money case in April, Salaam – one of the Central Park Five defendants – published his own advertisement on social media.Salaam argued that Trump’s response to his multiple legal cases had been to warn of “potential death and destruction”, and to repeatedly threaten judges, prosecutors, court staff and others – actions that certainly represented, in Trump’s own words, “an attack on our safety”.Even so, Salaam said, he did not believe Trump’s civil liberties should be suspended.“I am putting my faith in the judicial system to seek out the truth,” the wrongly incarcerated man wrote. “I hope that you exercise your civil liberties to the fullest, and that you get what the Exonerated 5 did not get – a presumption of innocence, and a fair trial.”Salaam added that he hoped, if convicted, Trump would endure his punishment with “strength and dignity”, which his teenage cohort did while serving time for a crime the group did not commit.Other commenters have noted that Trump was in a relatively privileged position to even have his New York criminal case go to trial before a jury. More than 90% of felony convictions at both the state and federal levels are the result of plea bargains – not jury trials. Trials are expensive and time-consuming, and those who cannot afford to pay for a lawyer (which is most people) must rely on overburdened public defenders, who are typically struggling with unmanageably large caseloads.Trump’s team of private attorneys is already preparing to appeal his conviction.Trump’s opinion: criminal penalties should be harsher and more violentIn the decades since his newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, Trump has repeatedly endorsed harsher penalties for a wide range of crimes, including threatening 10-year prison terms for anyone vandalizing a statue or other federal monument, suggesting that people who sell illegal drugs should be executed, and praising the president of the Philippines for his approach to drugs, which included the extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers by both police and vigilantes.View image in fullscreenTrump publicly suggested that soldiers could shoot at people at US borders who throw rocks at them, reportedly suggested in private in 2019 that soldiers shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down, and reportedly made a similar comment about shooting protesters in the legs during the height of the social justice demonstrations prompted by a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd in 2020.And it wasn’t just talk: the Trump administration ordered federal prosecutors to pursue the heaviest possible sentences, resumed executing prisoners after 17 years of an informal moratorium on the death penalty at the federal level, pulled the justice department back from investigating local police departments for civil rights violations, and blocked small-business owners with criminal records from receiving federal relief during the coronavirus pandemic.“Criminals only understand strength!” the president tweeted in 2020, criticising Portland’s mayor for his insufficiently tough treatment of local protesters demonstrating against police violence.How Trump will be treated:While Trump falsely claimed he is facing “187 years” in prison after his felony convictions this week, the maximum penalty in his case is actually four years. Legal experts say that, as a first-time offender convicted of a nonviolent crime, Trump is unlikely to face any prison time at all. Instead, his punishment is likely to be some combination of fines, probation and community service.Trump’s opinion: repeated critical statements about felons votingTrump made multiple false claims about thousands of felons illegally voting in Georgia and tipping the 2020 election results against him, according to the Washington Post’s database of 30,573 false or misleading claims that he made as president.When a news report revealed that billionaire Michael Bloomberg had raised $16m in 2020 to support a Florida non-profit’s efforts to restore the voting rights of people with felony convictions, Trump denounced the effort as a crime and accused Bloomberg of trying to buy votes for Biden by “bribing ex-prisoners to go out and vote”. Top Republican officials in Florida announced an investigation into whether Bloomberg had violated the law, and they eventually decided he had not.How Trump will be treated:Despite his felony conviction, Trump is likely to be able to vote in November’s presidential election due to voting rights restoration rules in Florida and New York. If difficulties emerge, he could ask Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who has endorsed him in the 2024 presidential race, for personal assistance restoring his voting rights. Regardless of whether he can legally cast a vote, his felony conviction does not stop him from running for president. More

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      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s conviction: a criminal unfit to stand or serve | Editorial

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      Guilty. The New York jury’s unanimous verdicts on 34 counts mean that Donald Trump is not only the first sitting or former US president to be prosecuted in a criminal trial, but the first to be convicted.Trump was found to have falsified business records to hide $130,000 of hush money paid to cover up a sex scandal he feared might hinder his run in 2016. Before his entry into politics, it would have been taken for granted that such charges would kill a campaign. Yet Trump is running for the White House as a convicted criminal. If he is jailed when he is sentenced in July – which most experts think unlikely – it is assumed that he would continue. If anything, the prospect of such a sentence spurs him on.It is grim testament to his character that in some ways the most startling aspect of testimony in the five‑week trial was about his fear of the electoral impact that the adult film star Stormy Daniels’ allegation of extramarital sex might have. It was a reminder of how far he has lowered the political bar. Eight years on, critics have been forced to acknowledge that no scandal or shame seems to weaken the attachment of his core voters or the craven bond of Republican politicians. Each fresh revelation has seemed to almost reinforce his aura of impregnability to political controversy.This trial too was in some ways grist to his mill, raising funds and firing up supporters. Some said they were more likely to vote for him if he were convicted. He continues to play the martyr: “Our whole country is being rigged right now,” he lied to supporters. He says he will appeal against his “scam” conviction.Yet no one doubts that his anger, and his glum post-verdict demeanour, were real. Polling suggested that some supporters would think twice if there were a conviction. The hearings have cost him time and focus ahead of a closely contested election. With the outcome hanging on turnout and a small number of waverers in a handful of battleground states this November, even marginal effects could prove significant. Joe Biden now has an opportunity – albeit one which must be used carefully, and which will not on its own erase shortcomings within the Democratic campaign.The three criminal cases Trump still faces – over the alleged mishandling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election – are graver by far, but are not expected to be heard before election day. While this may not have been the case that his opponents wanted, it has proved that he breaks the law for political advantage. Failing to pursue it for fear that he would exploit the charges would have meant tacitly caving in to his bullyboy tactics.Having wreaked devastation upon US politics, Trump seeks to undermine the rule of law too. He has assailed the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the legal system itself. He broke a gag order 10 times. The damage he has caused must not be underestimated or overlooked. But the judicial process has held.While so many powerful Republican politicians have quailed and fallen into line, 12 ordinary men and women have held him accountable. Their verdict has confirmed once more that this man is unfit to run the country. Their peers should take heed when they issue their own verdict at the ballot box in November. More

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      So Trump moves closer to jail and nearer to the White House. This is our world in 2024 | Marina Hyde

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      No rest for political cartographers. It turns out that what lay beyond America’s uncharted waters was some more uncharted waters. The unanimous verdict in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial found the former president guilty, making him the first US president to be convicted of a crime. Forgive me: 34 crimes. A potential bar to security clearance, voting and owning a gun – but not, apparently, a bar to running for president. “I am a political prisoner,” ran an instant campaign fundraising message from Trump, probably typed on the same gold toilet he once pretty much ran the world off.And might well again. Previous polls have indicated some Trump voters would switch in the event of a guilty verdict, but this morning the betting markets had Trump’s chances above 50% for the first time. On the other hand, if criminal trial verdicts going the wrong way for you is such great news, how come Trump is trying so hard to stall the other three cases he’s facing? By way of a reminder, those involve mishandling classified documents, trying to change the outcome of the election, and fomenting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. He’s already been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in another trial last year, and impeached twice. Take in his thousands of business-related court cases and he’s a one-man law degree.That the import of Trump’s conviction is even debated highlights the extraordinary loss of ideals we have lived through in a single decade. It is simply impossible to imagine a world where, even 10 years ago, any president being convicted of 34 crimes would be regarded – including by many of his detractors – as quite possibly good for his electoral prospects.The ability to make people believe the opposite of the things they see with their own eyes is not a new political trick, and even the version that defines this looking-glass era was perfected by Vladimir Putin long before Trump ever produced his own knock-off model. Perhaps Trump’s most original achievement is to harness conspiracism, one of the great currents of the age, in his favour. I will never get over the vast irony of the fact that conspiracy theorists love this guy – when he embodies and proves so many of their worst fears. He ran, and may run again, a government that lied to them. He was head of a state that disappeared key documents, evidently into some of his own bathrooms. Every day he pulls a political false-flag attack of one kind or another. He was, and is, involved in any number of conspiracies. He really was out to get them. Yet their paranoia bell doesn’t go off.So free-speech nuts decline to see that this is a case in which Trump clearly sought to suppress free speech and consequently democracy. This is what authoritarians do. They decide what the “truth” is going to be, and they manipulate events into making it so. Dissent is silenced. The people are judged too worthless and troublesome to be allowed to make up their own minds (all populists actually hate their people, even as they tell them they are just like one of them). Ideals we might consider the cornerstone of a democracy – free speech, the rule of law – are regarded as things that need to be got around, subverted and ultimately crushed. Democracy, really, is the enemy. Control is the goal.And if you’re good enough at it, as Trump and Putin surely are, your former critics become your fawning court, to the point that no one can even imagine your successor, certainly unless you anoint him (and it will be a him). To watch previous Republican scourges of Trump such as JD Vance or Marco Rubio fawning around him is to imagine a mirror of events that played out inside the Kremlin many years ago. And, indeed, during a succession of earlier Russian presidencies. Even Nikki Haley has recently folded and says she’ll vote for him, and she didn’t even need to be tacitly threatened with nerve-agent poisoning to do it. A bunch of Wall Street big hitters have come around – maybe Trump will gift them some mining concessions or an oil company, like proper little oligarchs.Right after the verdict, his ghastly strongman son Donald Jr popped up to declare, again, that America was turning “into a third-world shithole”. To which the reaction of many oversea observers will have been: you said it, mate. Good of you to be so open, at least.Naturally, I am not being entirely serious. But for many around the globe, the former US president has become like the country’s gun laws – a situation of such glaringly objective negativity that they honestly don’t need some angry native to explain to them how actually it’s all an aspirational local custom that they, an outsider, could never understand. Most people feel they understand it pretty well. No country is immune from making itself a joke – certainly we Brits have had a few really determined goes at it down the years – and the US is currently the world’s leading exporter of mirthless laughs.Even those die in the throat when you consider that far from having been always there, full American democracy is less than 60 years old. And if its betting markets think that a former president being convicted of multiple crimes is a boost to his prospects, then the world must be drawn to the conclusion that it is currently very sick, and quite possibly without health insurance. You can only wish it well.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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      ‘Karma always get you’: New Yorkers react to verdict in Trump criminal trial

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      The aftermath of the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts played out amid scenes of stress, jubilation and shock in Manhattan – the slice of New York that first made the former US president into a global celebrity and has now declared one of its most famous sons a guilty criminal.Police cruisers tore downtown after jurors announced they’d reached a verdict in Trump’s hush-money trial, and many New Yorkers had been glued to their phones waiting for the decision to be relayed. Mayor Eric Adams tried to reassure citizens that authorities were prepared for unrest.“I guess we all get what we deserve and this man is just a low-life,” said Joseph McGee, 62, who was standing on the corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street. “Karma always get you. If it wasn’t for this, it’s for everything else he’s done. It’s a real good thing.”Others were less sure. “This is going to hand him the election, no question,” said Ashish Bajha from Michigan.View image in fullscreen“I work in Dayton, Ohio, and you should hear what they say out there – they think it’s a political-bias case. It’s polarizing to an already polarized base and the unfortunate part is Biden’s support is already quite low. They’re not getting Biden’s base out with this, they’re getting Trump’s,” Bajha added.Trump was not without support. In the melting pot of New York City, though overwhelmingly Democratic, there are people of all political stripes – both visitors and residents. And all opinions could be found.In bustling and touristy Times Square, Jai Shannon, 33, said there was the belief in her community in Florida that Trump was set up by the system. “He’s being cheated,” she said. “He’s being made an example of.”Jerry Sharkey III, from Harlem, who had been at a probation hearing in the same criminal courthouse where Trump’s trial was winding up, was a firm fan of the real estate mogul turned reality TV star turned US president.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen“I see this as a political trial, but they can spin it a lot of different ways. I’m a Trump supporter no matter what, and being in the Manhattan courthouse has nothing to do with being the president,” Sharkey said.Many others offered a more typical New York Democrat response.“I was cheering. I was thrilled by the verdict,” said Lisa Taylor, 49. “I just wish it would keep him from being re-elected. Surely, the Republicans are scrambling now to be, like, what do we do? But given their history I’m not optimistic they’ll do anything.”Opposite the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, where supporters and opponents alike had gathered, both cheers and boos were thrown up when a newly guilty Trump arrived back from the courthouse and pumped his fist in the air.A man who gave his name as Sherwin said the case was about the facts and facts were what Trump had been convicted on. But he acknowledged that it was unlikely to be interpreted through anything other than a political lens.View image in fullscreen“America is flooded with division and we can’t seem to be united on anything, and this kind of makes it more obvious. People who hate Trump are really happy, and people who love Trump are really angry,” he said.A pair of Belgian tourists said it was the same situation in their country, with a potentially divisive election being held next month. One said: “The question we ask is, what, can’t they find anyone better? You’ve got two 80-year-olds running for office.”Another visitor, from the Netherlands, said she considered Trump “the most improper man ever”.View image in fullscreen“How he thinks about women, he thinks he can do anything, lie about everything and it doesn’t matter,” she said. A trio of students stopped by to offer comment. “He embezzled, he bribed, he’s mega-racist,” said Dee. “On top of that he’s just fucking weird.”New Yorker Kimia Faribozz, 26, said she doubted Trump’s conviction would make much difference. “After the impeachments, he just kind of did his thing, so I don’t know if this is going to affect him. I feel like people older than me are more neo-liberal and think this is a huge movement that he now can’t vote in Florida but can still run, but people closer to my age are a little more pessimistic.”View image in fullscreenOn the corner of 51st and Broadway, Times Square entertainer Timothy Drayton said it would never happen that authorities would let a former president serve a jail sentence.“They will not let that happen for the generations that came before or after them. America doesn’t want that. He said: ‘Make America great again’ – not the political parties. They’re not looking at the people, and the people aren’t going to go for that because it will destroy America’s whole outlook on the presidency,” Drayton said. More

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      Trump guilty on all counts – so what happens next? – podcast

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      Donald Trump has made history again, becoming the first US president, sitting or former, to be a convicted criminal. Late on Thursday a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Within minutes of leaving the courtroom, Trump said he would appeal.
      On an historic night for US politics, Politics Weekly America host Jonathan Freedland speaks to Guardian US reporter Sam Levine about what the hush-money trial verdict will mean – both for Trump and for the election in November

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump was just convicted of conspiracy and fraud. He could still win re-election | Lloyd Green

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      On Thursday, a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of conspiracy and fraud in a case stemming from payments that the former president arranged to cover up an affair with the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The presumptive Republican nominee is now a convicted felon.He was already an adjudicated sexual predator and fraudster. Trump once quipped that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Maybe not.Sentencing has been set for 11 July. Of course, it is unlikely that Trump will serve time in prison for what amounts to a bookkeeping offense. Rather, he could be placed on probation and required to report to New York City’s probation department, which has been described as a “humbling” experience. Regardless, the conviction does not disqualify him as a candidate or bar him from again sitting in the Oval Office.Practically speaking, Americans who support Joe Biden must internalize that Trump’s conviction is unlikely to greatly impact his odds of being re-elected president – which are already far higher than many Democrats care to acknowledge. The betting markets are in his corner.The deadline for further motions is 27 June, which is also the day of the first presidential debate. Trump, who denied the charges against him, had previously branded the trial “rigged” and a “scam”. As he exited the courthouse on Thursday, he told watching cameras: “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th, by the people.”In the aftermath of his defeat in 2016 in the Iowa caucus and again after losing to Biden in 2020, he resorted to the same playbook. Regardless, his disgrace and lust for vengeance are real. Just look at January 6. Someone who would otherwise be barred from obtaining a security clearance could be the next president. For its part, the Republican party, the so-called law-and-order party, has embraced a convicted criminal as its standard-bearer.Defeat in a New York courtroom, however, is not the same as a Trump loss in November. The 45th president possesses the good fortune of running against an 81-year-old with a halting gait and tentative mien.The calendar will quickly test whatever boost Biden garners from his predecessor’s criminal conviction.On 3 June, the trial of Hunter Biden on federal gun charges kicks off in Delaware. Seemingly clueless to this reality, the president hosted his prodigal son at a recent state dinner for William Ruto, the president of Kenya. Hunter Biden also faces a trial on criminal tax charges in early September, just as the fall campaign begins in earnest.By the end of June, the US supreme court too may provide Trump with another boost. It is expected that the Republican-dominated high court will further slow the special counsel’s election interference case against Trump, ostensibly over the issue of presidential immunity.Last, the first presidential debate is slated for 27 June. Four years have passed since Biden and a Covid-carrying Trump squared off before the cameras. Trump came in too hot while Biden bobbed and weaved. Biden also dinged fossil fuels, making the race in Pennsylvania closer than necessary.However you slice it, Biden’s post-State of the Union resurgence is over. He persistently trails Trump in the critical battleground states. He runs behind the Democratic Senate candidates in places like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Let’s be clear, the rejection is to some extent personal. Unabated doubts swirl about Biden’s continued capacity to lead and govern. Most Americans view Biden as incapable of taming inflation, let alone securing the border.“Working-class voters are unhappy about President Biden’s economy,” Axios reports.Beyond that, the sting of inflation is actually sharper in the precincts of so-called red America. Ominously for the incumbent, his difficulties with non-college graduates cut across race and ethnicity.David Axelrod, chief political adviser to Barack Obama, has taken Biden – Obama’s vice-president – to task. It’s “absolutely true” that the economy has grown under Biden, Axelrod told CNN, but voters are “experiencing [the economy] through the lens of the cost of living. And he is a man who’s built his career on empathy. Why not lead with the empathy?”Instead, Biden keeps touting his own record to tepid applause.“If he doesn’t win this race, it may not be Donald Trump that beats him,” Axelrod continued. “It may be his own pride.”By the numbers, Biden leads among suburban moms and dads and households earning more than $50,000, but lags among people with lower incomes. His voting base bears little resemblance to the lunch-bucket coalition that powered Franklin D Roosevelt and John F Kennedy to the White House last century.“We keep wondering why these young people are not coming home to the Democrats. Why are [Black voters] not coming home to the Democrats?” James Carville, the campaign guru behind Bill Clinton’s win in 1992, recently lamented. “Because Democrat messaging is full of shit, that’s why.”Once upon a time, Carville coined the phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Three decades have not diminished its truth or resonance.Similarly, Biden ignores the reality that he must hug the cultural center as he tacks leftward on economics. Working Americans want stability, safe streets and a paycheck that takes them far. Campus radicals, riots and identity politics are a turnoff.Both Trump and Biden have aged and slowed down since their paths first crossed. Trump continues to display manic stamina on the stump. In contrast, Biden’s events are uninspired, under-attended and over-scripted. For the president, “spontaneity” is synonymous with “gaffe”.Whether Biden brings his A-game to the June debate may determine his fate. If he fails, expect a long summer for the Democrats. Indeed, the party’s convention set for Chicago may rekindle unpleasant memories of 1968. And we know how that ended.To win, Biden must quickly capitalize on Trump’s conviction. The jury is out on whether the 46th president possesses the requisite skill-set.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Ex-Apprentice producer claims Trump used racial slur for Black contestant

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      Donald Trump used a racial epithet to reject the prospect of a Black winner on the debut season of The Apprentice, the Emmy-nominated series that transformed the former president into a reality TV star and fuelled his political career.Trump rejected the views of close aides that Kwame Jackson, a broker who worked for Goldman Sachs, had been the most impressive contestant, saying, “Would America buy a [N-word] winning?”, according to a producer who worked on the NBC show’s opening series in 2004, when it was called Meet the Billionaire.The anecdote is related by Bill Pruitt in a long essay in the online magazine Slate, titled The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice.According to Pruitt, Jackson had emerged from a field of candidates to contest the final with a white competitor, Bill Rancic, after being assigned the task of overseeing a Jessica Simpson benefit concert at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.Jackson reportedly impressed two Trump advisers with his ability to overcome obstacles, including his handling of a difficult fellow contestant who had earlier been eliminated but whom he had hired to help stage the concert.Yet when one adviser, Carolyn Kepcher – who ran Trump’s hospitality units and one of his golf clubs – praised Jackson, saying he “would be a great addition to the organisation”, Trump demurred, winced – and then uttered the racial slur.“Kepcher’s pale skin goes bright red,” Pruitt writes. “I turn my gaze toward Trump. He continues to wince. He is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson.”He adds: “None of us thinks to walk out the door and never return. I still wish I had.”Trump’s racist remarks were subsequently unmentioned at the production meetings, and Rancic was duly announced as the winner.Their disclosure comes at a time when Trump – who has a history of racist rhetoric – is making efforts to woo Black voters, a bedrock of Joe Biden’s support, amid polling evidence that some are warming to him as he seeks a second presidency in November. Last week, Trump addressed a rally in New York’s Bronx borough, whose audience was about a quarter Black or Hispanic.His outreach to a voting bloc that backed the Democrats by more than nine to one in his 2020 election victory over Trump – but has shown apparent signs of apathy to Biden in polling – has alarmed the incumbent president and prompted him to launch his own charm offensive to retain its loyalty.Race is not the only sensitivity uncovered by Pruitt. He paints Trump as a confidence trickster incapable of delivering his lines to the camera or remembering contestants’ names – but who was falsely portrayed as competent, prescient and insightful by careful production treatment in the interests of making a successful series.“While filming, he struggled to convey even the most basic items,” Pruitt writes. “He could barely put a sentence together regarding how a task would work.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe presumptive Republican presidential nominee – who on Thursday awaited the verdict in a trial alleging that he arranged for hush money to be paid to an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels – is also depicted as sexist. At one point, he reportedly ordered a female camera operator out of an elevator where she was about to film him, calling her “too heavy”.Pruitt also describes being taken by Trump to one of his houses, which the then property tycoon suggests was a venue for his illicit sexual trysts, adding with a snicker: “Melania [then his fiancee, now his wife] doesn’t even know about this place.”He recalled meeting the architect of the clubhouse at the Trump National Golf Club, who told him that he was proud of the building but bitter that Trump did not pay him what he owed. “Trump pays half upfront,” he quotes the architect as saying. “But he’ll stiff you for the rest once the project is completed.”According to Pruitt, even the show’s trademark “you’re fired” line was not Trump’s work but was coined by producers after the star of the show had initially used a convoluted line to a losing contestant about taking an elevator down to the street that was deemed unfit to broadcast.None of this made it on to the final edit seen by the viewing public.“The truth is, almost nothing was how we made it seem,” Pruitt writes in mea culpa style. “So, we scammed. We swindled. Nobody heard the racist and misogynistic comments or saw the alleged cheating, the bluffing, or his hair taking off in the wind. Those tapes, I’ve come to believe, will never be found.”Contacted by Slate to comment on the allegations, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, called it a “completely fabricated and bullshit story that was already peddled in 2016” and attributed its current publication to the Democrats, who he said were “desperate”. More

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      ‘I need you’: Biden-Harris campaign launches initiative to court Black voters

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      Gearing up for the 2024 election, the Biden-Harris campaign launched its Black voters initiative on Wednesday at Philadelphia’s Girard College, a majority Black boarding school.Around 2pm in an auditorium filled with hundreds of Black Philly residents, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris approached the podium to applause and an audience shouting “four more years”.As the president listed off his accomplishments that affected Black voters during his presidency, Biden repeated the refrain “a promise made and a promise kept”. He said that he’s relieved student debt for nearly 5 million Americans, banned police chokeholds, created databases for police misconduct, and appointed the first Black woman on the supreme court.Those accomplishments, Biden said, were made possible through the “enormous trust” that Black voters placed in him in 2020.Harris told the crowd that as a candidate, Biden gave his word of fighting some of the biggest issues facing the Black community, such as capping the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors, and removing medical debt as a factor on a credit score.View image in fullscreen“Thank you!” an audience member shouted. Turning to the election, Biden said: “We’re going to make Donald Trump a loser again. I’m still optimistic, but I need you.” His one question for Black voters: “Are you with me?” The crowd stood up as they shouted back “yes”.A few blocks outside of the event, a small group of protesters who wore keffiyehs served as a reminder of many younger voters’ disgruntlement with Biden’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza.But back in the auditorium, gospel singers dressed in black sang Oh Happy Day as they stood underneath a large blue poster that read “Black Voters for Biden-Harris”. Girard College students dressed in maroon shirts clapped from the bleachers. The audience skewed older, with some attendees holding signs that read “Historically Black”.Verna Hutchinson-Toler, a 75-year-old voter from Bucks county, Pennsylvania, said that she came out in support of Biden because she’s “passionate about voter registration as a social determinant of health”. She referenced research that showed that communities with a high amount of registered voters get the most attention to their environmental and healthcare needs.As a chaplain at the Children’s hospital of Philadelphia, Hutchinson-Toler has seen patients who are the victims of gun violence, which has fueled her advocacy for gun control. “Personally I feel his track record has been amazing,” she said about Biden’s crack down on ghost guns.Zelma Carroll, a 57-year-old certified nursing assistant from Philadelphia, was grateful that Biden wiped away some of her daughter’s student loans from Penn State University. Carroll had canvassed for the Biden-Harris campaign four years ago and plans to do so again soon. “I just hope that they get in our neighborhoods and let people know where we’re going, where we need to be and we can’t go back,” Carroll said. “We can’t let Trump in.”View image in fullscreenWinston Cameron, a registered independent, said that he came to the event to “hear from the horse’s mouth”. Cameron voted for Biden in 2020 and was uncertain if he would vote for him again. For Cameron, a 35-year-old student originally from Jamaica, immigration and the economy are the issues he’s most concerned about. “It could be better,” Cameron said about Biden’s accomplishments in those arenas. “I can see the positive changes that he’s trying to implement, but I think it’s still a weak stance.” Nevertheless, Cameron said, he was satisfied with Biden’s attention to Dreamers, immigrants who arrived to the US as children. Earlier this month, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give healthcare coverage to Dreamers.Overall, the audience at Wednesday’s event was energized by the administration’s Black voters’ initiative. But perhaps most of all, they wanted to ensure that Trump didn’t win the election again. “My only issue that I’m concerned about is that other guy coming back,” said 77-year-old Philadelphia resident Rick Harper, a delegate for the Democratic national convention in August. “I’m very happy with President Biden and Vice-President Harris.” More