Donald Trump’s scandalous history with women

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has a mixed history with women, with crude remarks mixed with efforts to foster the career of female employees, The New York Times reported.

The thrice-married Trump, 69, cultivated an image as a womaniser ever since he was in an all-male military school in the 1960s, where he was dubbed a “ladies' man,” the Times reported on Saturday.

But the Times, in more than 50 interviews with women associated with Trump over the past four decades, shows a more complex and contradictory image.
There were unwelcome advances on women and plenty of crude commentary on female bodies, the Times reported. But Trump also nurtured the careers of several women within his business organisation.

Trump was also behind Miss Universe and other beauty pageants. One Miss USA contestant said that in 1997 Trump, who was married to actress Marla Maples at the time, introduced himself and kissed her and other contestants on the lips.

Another anecdote has revealed how Trump invited model Rowanne Brewer Lane, 26, to a 1990 pool party and offered her a bathing suit after finding out she didn’t bring one.

“He took me into a room and asked me to put on a swimsuit. I went into the bathroom and tried one on. It was a bikini. I came out, and he said, ‘Wow’, ” she told the Times. Trump was 44 at the time, going through his first divorce. “He brought me out to the pool and said, ‘That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?’,” Brewer Lane added.

However Trump also hired Barbara Res as his head of construction in the 1980s, at a time when there were few women in such positions at construction firms.
She said that her boss wanted her to be a ‘Donna Trump’. “While men tend to be better than women, a good woman is better than 10 good men,” she recalls him saying.

Years later, Trump told her, “You like your candy,” Res told the Times. “It was him reminding me that I was overweight.” Res worked with Trump for 18 years. “The respect for women was always there,” Alan Lapidus, an architect who worked for Trump said. “When he was building his empire, the backbone was women.”
Trump also told the Times that he was proud of his record of hiring women.

Tags: donald trump, womaniser