Claudia Jordan had a not-so-presidential encounter with Donald Trump, she says in a new interview.
The former “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star was a guest on the “Behind The Velvet Rope With David Yontef” podcast this week and gave an account of Trump’s past efforts to kiss her in the years before she landed a slot on his reality TV show “The Apprentice,” including her response to the unwanted gesture. Jordan’s first season on “The Apprentice” was in 2009.
“Oh, before I got ‘Apprentice,’ we were just like the year or the year leading up to the show. He was trying it a little bit, you know, he would kind of do it. … He tried to kiss me was it once? Twice,” she said. “And I had to remind him that he was married. That was like, you are not putting that tongue in my mouth. This is not going to happen. Absolutely not.”
Trump was also apparently free with giving Jordan his own personal dating advice, as she recalls his suggestion that she not go out with Black men.
“Like he called me a few times and … he would tell me that I shouldn’t waste my time with Black men, dating them, which I was at the time dating an Olympic athlete, Black man, and who is the best in the world,” she remembered. “And I was like, ‘Wait, why would you say that to me?’ And he said, ‘Cause they don’t have money.’ And I was like, Hmm, OK. So just throw away the whole race because they don’t have the money to you. So I told him, I said … ‘That’s not a cool thing.’”
Jordan added, “I know he did like me as a person. I know he floated and he did try to kiss me twice, but I wasn’t gonna go along with that. And you know, he tried me a couple times, but I was still able to, like I said, curve, which a lot of women, we shouldn’t have to have the skill, but a lot of us do have that skill.
Still, despite Jordan’s ability to “curve,” she made it clear that she was not going to tolerate Trump’s actions.
“We have to navigate where, OK, it wasn’t sexual assault, I’m not going to say that, but you are trying it and you are a married man. And let me remind you, you are married to Melania and I’m not her. … So you can put your little orange lips on your wife and we can do business but you are gonna be over there.”
Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 26 women since the 1970s.
He has continually repudiated the allegations and called the accusers “liars.” Trump and his lawyers have even implied that in some cases, he could not have allegedly assaulted certain women because he was not physically attracted to them.
In October 2016, just a month before Trump was elected president, another former “The Apprentice” contestant, Summer Zervos, claimed that Trump assaulted her at The Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007.
“He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast,” she said. “I pulled back and walked to another part of the room. He then walked up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into the bedroom. I walked out.”
After Trump claimed she was lying about the accusations, Zervos sued him for defamation. Trump’s lawyers have tried to have the case dismissed and contended that since Trump is president he cannot “be sued in state court” and that his comments about his accusers are “political speech.”
