Who would have thought a former beauty pageant owner who joked about how he'd date his young daughter if he weren't her dad would ever be accused of favoring young, beautiful employees? A shocker, we know, but that's apparently the latest revelation in the world of Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.
According to employees at Donald Trump's Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, the Commander in Chief hopeful used to demand that female employees who he did not deem attractive enough be fired from the club.
The claims appear in court documents surrounding a 2012 lawsuit over insufficient meal or rest breaks at the club, the L.A. Times reports. Hayley Strozier, who formerly worked as the director of catering, said that she had personally seen numerous occasions upon which Trump would visit, spot a woman he did not deem "pretty enough" and request she be let go and replaced with someone he found more aesthetically pleasing. This happened so often, according to Strozier, that they began preparing for his visits by intentionally scheduling the most attractive women. And by attractive, they appear to mean those that fit Trump's standards: young, thin, pretty women.
An attorney for the Trump Organization told the L.A. Times that the accusations were "meritless."
In one instance, Strozier said she was instructed by a Trump Organization VP, Vincent Stellio, to fire a female attractive simply for being overweight, because "Mr. Trump doesn't like fat people." Strozier refused, and said she was approached by another employee, Trump National general manager Mike van der Goes, to fire the same woman a year later. When she refused again, she said van der Goes came up with "a plan of hiding [the woman] whenever Mr. Trump was on the premises."
Another employee, former restaurant manager Sue Kwiatkowski, said in the documents that Trump instructed her to hire some "good looking hostesses." She also noted that it was rare for a woman over 40 to be on staff when Trump came to call. Older female employees complained that their shifts were reduced or cut in favor of younger, attractive women who did not have as much experience, particularly when Trump was scheduled to visit.
Another female employee described him as "overly familiar and unprofessional," and a male employee recalled a time when Trump presented a young female hostess to a group of guests by saying, "See, you don't have to go to Hollywood to find beautiful women." The employee then said Trump turned to her and asked her if she liked Jewish men for some reason. A different male employee said he comforted a female employee who he found crying because she was told she would never be promoted to server due to having acne.
The lawsuit was mostly settled in 2013 in the amount of $475,000, a settlement that did not include club management admitting that they had done anything wrong. Trump's attorneys have denied many of these claims and Trump himself has said he treats women so "nicely" that people are impressed by him.
During Monday's presidential debate, Hillary Clinton brought up the accusation that Trump once called 1996 Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping." After the debate, he said on Fox & Friends that Machado "was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst, she was impossible." He added, "She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem. We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude."
Machado is now part of a campaign ad produced by the Clinton campaign:
None of this would be the first time that Trump has been accused of being sexist. Attorney Elizabeth Beck told CNN that in 2011, Trump had some sort of meltdown when she asked if a deposition could take a short break so that she could pump breast milk for her child. Beck was there representing clients who claimed that they lots a great deal of money over a defunct real estate project in Florida that Trump had been involved with. A New York Times story from May (which the above tweet is in response to) outlines his long history of misogyny.
"He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, 'You're disgusting, you're disgusting,' and he ran out of there," she said.
But, Trump probably doesn't care about this latest bit of intel into his alleged misogyny, because in a 1991 interview with Esquire, he said that "it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."
