Former Miss Teen USA Says She Was Told Donald Trump ‘Doesn’t Like Black People’
A flood of news has broken this week about Donald Trump: a 2005 videotape surfaced, forgotten quotes were unearthed, and women have stepped forward alleging sexual assault. Watching it all unfold on social media with the rest of us was one woman who had a front row seat to Trump’s antics: Miss Teen USA 2010, Kamie Crawford.
“I wanna spill my tea so bad,” Crawford tweeted after retweeting quotes from a BuzzFeed story alleging that Trump had walked into the dressing rooms of pageant contestants as young as age 15. “But let me just say – I believe every word,” Crawford wrote. After some encouragement from her followers, she pressed on, sharing what she alleged happened when she encountered Trump years ago.
Crawford describes the pageant as an interesting experience. According to her account on Twitter, at just 17 years old, Crawford was warned about Trump. “I was forewarned prior to meeting him that, ‘Mr. Trump doesn’t like black people so don’t take it the wrong way if he isn’t extremely welcoming towards you. If he is, then u just might be the ‘type’ of black he likes,’” she tweeted. It was startling advice for the new titleholder.
According to Crawford, who declined Yahoo’s requests for an interview and seems to be declining all interview requests per her Twitter account, this was her only personal experience with racism.
And if she doubted the advice, it wasn’t long before she says she saw it up close and personal. “Sure enough after I was warned about him, I saw him in action&witnessed him completely snub a black contestant at Miss Universe rehearsals,” the model and cast member of BET’s F in Fabulous tweeted. “While she was practicing on stage. Literally turned his back to the stage and made a face like he was going to vomit at the sight of her.” Crawford does allow that the action could have been initiated by something else.
This news is one of a few admissions from those who have had interactions with Trump that they say fall into the racist category. Kwame Jackson, a former contestant on The Apprentice, told Salon he believed the presidential candidate to be “at his core, racist.” In fact, a producer for the first two seasons of the show alluded to there being “far worse” tapes of Trump than the now infamous Access Hollywood footage published by the Washington Post last Friday, with one source saying that the tapes could include racist language.
In 1973, the Justice Department sued Trump Management for anti-black bias, charging both Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump, with discrimination against black people in the way they operated apartment rentals they owned. Trump, who was 27 years old at the time, called the allegations “completely ridiculous,” saying “we never have discriminated, and we never would.”
Trump’s separation from the Miss Universe Organization came after a racially fueled dispute. Both NBC and Univision refused to air the Miss USA pageant after Trump made controversial comments implying that Mexican immigrants are rapists when he announced his presidential campaign in June 2015. Trump then sold the Miss Universe Organization, which includes the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants to WME/IMG in September 2015.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, sources who worked closely with Trump when he owned the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants claim he demonstrated a bias against women of color. According to the article, one source recalled that he did not want African-Americans in the top 10 of the Miss USA pageant. This person also said: “He was very concerned one year. He did not want one woman to win because she was Puerto Rican. He said, ‘She can’t win. Don’t get me wrong she’s a beautiful girl, I just don’t want her to win.’”
That said, a source close to the pageant, who asked to remain anonymous, tells Yahoo Beauty that she has never heard any comments about racism relative to Trump. During his ownership of the Miss Universe Organization from 1996 to 2015, the source notes that the organization “moved away from crowning the typical ‘pageant Barbie’ and moved toward crowning Latina, and somewhat later, multi-ethnic or racially ambiguous contestants.”
According to the source, Crawford “loves to be the center of attention.”
We also reached out to a number of participants in the 2010 Miss Teen USA pageant, and spoke with former Miss Teen Alabama Ashlyn Alogi, who is white.
“Based on my own experiences, as well as general consensus from the other state winners of 2010, Mr. Trump did NOT make the described ‘barfing’ gesture, I would have known about it if he had,” Alogi said via email. “It is disappointing for individuals to make claims so offensive and untrue. I hold people to a higher societal standard than lying out of misplaced enmity and political allegiances.”
Crawford, though, says she was the “type” of black woman Trump reportedly likes. “He toted me around his buddies who were all there gawking at the Miss Universe girls,” she tweeted. “Bragged about how ‘beautiful’ and ‘well spoken’ I was. ‘She’s so smart, look how smart she is,’ he kept saying. Mind u, baby boy just met me.”
The Trump campaign has not responded to Yahoo Beauty’s request for comment.
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