Few if any minority senior executives in Trump’s empire
Contest winner said he was often the only person of color in room
WASHINGTON — Few, if any, black executives are in the upper ranks of the Trump Organization, a review by The Associated Press has found. Other minorities are also scarce at that level though Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has employed scores of executives.
Former executives say they can’t recall a single black vice president-level executive at Trump’s headquarters during their combined tenures at the Trump Organization LLC, which ranged from 1980 to late in the past decade. Reviews of social media postings by Trump and his family and Trump’s acknowledgements thanking executives in his books also fail to identify any senior black employees past or present.
Asked about the lack of African-American vice presidents last month, Trump assured the AP that he had hired minorities as senior executives and said his staff could readily provide specific details.
“I am the least discriminatory person in the world,” Trump said. “I have people that do the hiring, if you want to speak to them.”
The Trump Organization didn’t grant requests by the AP to provide such information or say whether Trump had hired an African-American vice president over the past 35 years.
The AP limited its review to the circle of senior executives who hold titles of vice president or higher within the Trump Organization, a corporate entity in which Trump and a group of top executives oversee hundreds of different companies and partnerships that control real estate, licensing and hospitality businesses. Some subsidiary businesses have their own hierarchies of presidents and vice presidents, but those executives are generally not located within Trump Tower headquarters and do not have the same authority and prestige.
Trump’s subsidiary businesses over the years have included golf courses, a modeling agency, casinos in multiple states and an airline. The AP did identify some African-Americans holding the VP title at such individual properties.
“The Trump Organization employs both females and minorities in positions of authority across the entire company and in recent years has made great progress in expanding an already diverse workforce,” Trump’s son, Eric, said in a statement to the AP. “As the company continues to expand, both domestically and internationally, we will continue to recruit the very best and brightest regardless of gender and ethnicity.”
The AP’s review found two Trump executives whose surnames could potentially indicate Hispanic or Middle Eastern backgrounds but did not draw any conclusions given the lack of cooperation by the Trump Organization.
Some black former employees said the absence of minorities among Trump’s top lieutenants was striking.
“It was quite commonplace for me to be the only person of color in the room for meetings at the executive level,” said Randal Pinkett, who in December 2005 won on “The Apprentice,” Trump’s reality show. That earned Pinkett a temporary vice president title within Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., not the Trump Organization directly.