This very morning, The New York Times has done an excellent, well-researched deep dive into Mr. Trump’s historical rental property practices. It puts the lie to his claim that blacks have nothing to lose in voting for him. Not that anyone would be surprised, but here is the proof — stone cold.
Here it is — do go read it all:
…Mr. Leibowitz was called to testify at the commission’s hearing on Ms. Brown’s case. Asked to estimate how many blacks lived in Mr. Trump’s various properties, he remembered replying: “To the best of my knowledge, none.”
After the hearing, Ms. Brown was offered an apartment in the Wilshire, and in the spring of 1964, she moved in. For 10 years, she said, she was the only African-American in the building.
Complaints about the Trump organization’s rental policies continued to mount: By 1967, state investigators found that out of some 3,700 apartments in Trump Village, seven were occupied by African-American families.
Like Ms. Brown, the few minorities who did live in Trump-owned buildings often had to force their way in….
A former Trump superintendent named Thomas Miranda testified that multiple Trump Management employees had instructed him to attach a separate piece of paper with a big letter “C” on it — for “colored” — to any rental application filed by a black apartment-seeker.
[Editor’s Insert: Here is a poignant short piece, of Mae Wiggins (who, after a protracted legal battle, prevailed against Mr. Trump), describing her experiences for the Times’ web video-graphers.]
The Trumps went on the offensive, filing a contempt-of-court charge against one of the prosecutors, accusing her of turning the investigation into a “Gestapo-like interrogation.” The Trumps derided the lawsuit as a pressure tactic to get them to sign a consent decree like the one agreed to by Mr. LeFrak….
After nearly two years of legal wrangling, the Trumps gave up and signed a consent decree….
Equal housing activists celebrated the agreement as more robust than the one signed by Mr. LeFrak. It required that Trump Management provide the New York Urban League with a weekly list of all its vacancies….
This story offers a hauntingly-ringing echo — in my own past experiences. Testers and racist landlords — in federal court, in Chicago, in 1985. We too concluded at an almost identical settlement, with that landlord — as mentioned above. All the damages went to charity — the UNCF and to an open housing 501(c)(3). Now you know.
Powerline Lies... 