An insider's view of Donald Trump: The possibility of another term is "terrifying"
My conversation with Barbra Res, the Trump organization's former executive VP, sounded the alarm over another Trump presidency two years ago
At a rally in West Palm Beach on Friday, Trump told his supporters that if they vote for him this election and help him win, there will be no need to vote again in four years.
“It’ll be fixed.”
This is chilling, of course. But Donald Trump has been telling us who he is for years now. It’s astounding how many people still don’t want to believe him.
Barbra Res is not one of them. Res was vice president of the Trump organization for almost twenty years. Two years ago, we sat down to discuss what it was like working so closely with Trump, and what kind of man he really is.
In 2020, Barbra wrote Tower of Lies: What My Eighteen Years of Working With Donald Trump Reveals About Him. She told me she had one goal in writing this book: to see if she could influence people not to vote for him again in 2020. Today more than ever, voters should hear what Barbra has to say.
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Who is Barbra Res?
Barbra Res was the executive vice president of the Trump organization from 1980 to 1998. She received a degree in Electrical Engineering from the City College of New York in 1971 and her Juris Doctor from Rutgers School of Law in 2007. She began working in construction the year she graduated from the City College of New York.
Barbra first met Donald Trump in 1978, and in 1980, she joined the Trump construction company. At that time, the company had two sides: construction and management. Management was Trump’s father’s company, while Trump focused on development and building.
When Barbra first began working with Trump, there were only seven or eight people on the payroll. She was specifically hired to manage the construction of the notorious Trump Tower. The first major project she worked on with him was the Hyatt Hotel.
Barbra said that Trump’s father, Fred, despised the fact that Trump hired women. He couldn’t imagine it. Everything Barbra did, she said, was met with Fred’s criticism and interference.
Why would Trump, the notorious misogynist and sexist, hire women?
Barbra told me that she had asked herself that question when she considered working directly with Trump. But when Trump hired her, he told her that women are better than men. Initially, she took this to mean that in the world of construction, women were better than men. But Trump went on to say that one good woman is better than ten men. Barbra believes he meant this.
Huh?
She then went on to explain that it was actually quite simple. Women have something to prove; we did then, and unfortunately, we still do today, she said. As a result, we work harder, smarter, and cheaper.
But Barbra clarified to me that Trump has always and will always believe that men are superior to women. She even said that she believes this is part of his political appeal. Here is a snapshot of her explanation:
“Trump believes, in my mind, and he’s shown this to me, that men are superior to women and that whites are superior to minorities. So, in his mind, if he hired a woman to do something, no matter how smart or how good she was, she would never be as good as he. Whereas a man might compete with him, there was no competition with a woman. Hands down, Donald believed he was better. And that’s another reason why he liked women around him.”
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