Meet Reed Cordish. Cordish, just announced as assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives, is a classic Trump hire: he’s from a wealthy real estate family and his companies—including bars and nightclubs—have been repeatedly accused of racism. Racial discrimination lawsuits against Cordish’s companies haven’t yet been successful, but, the Daily Beast reports, there’s plenty of basis for the suits. According to the testimony of multiple employees, Cordish-owned clubs made a practice of hiring “rabbits,” white people tasked specifically with getting black patrons kicked out:
Alexitch said his job was to “start altercations with certain groups of people. By starting these altercations, I ensured that these groups of people would be kicked out of the club.”
Superiors allegedly told him which groups to target.
“I would estimate that 90 percent of the people I started altercations with were African Americans,” Alexitch said.
According to the manager who hired Alexitch:
“At one of the meetings, I and several GMs from other cities were sitting around a table,” Cusimano said in an affidavit. “Several mentioned that they used a rabbit in their Cordish Districts. I remember one GM bragging that he kept a spray can of mace in his pocket, and from time to time, when it was dark and crowded, he would walk through the open area, and fire a shot up into the air above a group of black males.”
The Trump transition says that none of this has been proven in court (one lawsuit was settled), so therefore there’s no problem. Because multiple lawsuits in different cities over a period, with multiple employees backing their claims, are meaningless.
Do they think they’re fooling anyone? If you’re going to nominate an attorney general who Reagan-era Republicans felt was too racist to be a federal judge, having an “assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives” who thinks it’s good business to keep black people out of his clubs is not exactly a big leap. Shoot, kicking black people out on sight was standard practice at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies. All we learn from the allegations against Cordish is that the one issue where Trump is actually being consistent is racism.