A new account rekindles allegations that Trump disrespected Black people on ‘The Apprentice’

Gene Folkes had just been jettisoned as a contestant on "The Apprentice" and was commiserating with a crew member at a bar inside the lobby of Trump Tower. He was indignant — and not just at having been kicked off the reality show after its star, Donald Trump, had delivered his catchphrase: "You're fired."

One of two Black contestants chosen for that season in 2010, Folkes was insulted that Trump had called him inarticulate and accused him of illiteracy in a lengthy boardroom tirade minutes earlier.

As the crew member, a Black woman who worked as a contestant manager, consoled him, Trump suddenly appeared at the bar.

"He came up and he asked me: 'Is this your woman? Because you two would make a really great couple, you both have the same background,'" Folkes told The Associated Press.

The contestant manager quietly reminded Trump that she worked for him. Then, Trump made a comment similar to something he uttered in the boardroom that never aired on TV, Folkes said.

"He said again, 'It's not like I used the N-word,' and then he walked off, and that was that," said Folkes, a New York-based consultant, podcast host and U.S. Air Force veteran.

As Trump seeks to make inroads with African American voters in his third run for the White House, fresh allegations are surfacing about his disrespectful behavior toward Black people inside the Midtown skyscraper that launched his show and political career. There are still questions about whether any of that behavior was caught on tape.

Bill Pruitt, a former producer on "The Apprentice," published a recent account alleging that Trump actually used the racist slur to refer to Kwame Jackson, a Black contestant who was a finalist on the show's first season. A spokesperson for Trump's