A racial discrimination lawsuit and the Central Park Five case show Trump’s views on race predate his foray into politics

A new book by Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a former top adviser to Donald Trump, has raised fresh controversy with her claims that the president she served is a racist who was once recorded on tape using the “N-word”. For Trump, it is the latest chapter in a charged history with race and minorities.

Manigault-Newman, who is African American, left the White House last December and censured a lack of diversity in the Trump administration. She has also suggested she has other recordings of Trump while promoting her tell-all book, Unhinged, which is set for release on Tuesday. US media reports have not suggested anything unusual was recorded on those tapes.

Omarosa: Trump is a racist who uses N-word – and there's tape to prove it Read more

The allegations made by Manigault-Newman come just days after Trump drew backlash for mocking the intelligence of NBA superstar LeBron James and CNN anchor Don Lemon.

Trump launched a scathing attack on James after the basketball star, in an interview with Lemon, criticized the president for using his bully pulpit to divide Americans. “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” Trump tweeted. “He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

Trump’s comments fit within a pattern of questioning the intelligence of black public figures; the president has similarly taken aim at Maxine Waters, a black congresswoman from California, by repeatedly stating she has a “very low IQ”.

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Trump’s troubled relationship with race is hardly new. The former real estate mogul launched his political career by peddling the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama, the first black president in US history, was born in Kenya and calling for the release of his birth certificate.

On the campaign trail, Trump routinely sought to sow racial divisions by referring to urban areas as “war-zones” and inciting violence against Black Lives Matter protesters. The presidency has done little to change Trump’s rhetoric or tone. He infamously blamed both sides for violence led by white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August, and referred to certain parts of Africa and Latin America as “shithole countries”.

As part of his recurring feud with black athletes, Trump has called for the firing of NFL players who kneel during the national anthem and attacked them as “sons of bitches”. He has openly questioned the patriotism of the players, whose protests are designed to draw attention to police brutality and the need for criminal justice reform.

In one of the more remarkable moments of his presidency, Trump picked a fight with the widow of a US soldier who was killed in an ambush attack in Niger. In his condolence call to the widow of Sgt La David Johnson, Trump said the fallen solder “knew what he signed up for” – forcing the White House to once again defend the president’s tone.

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While the president’s incendiary comments have often been framed as part of the culture wars that ignite his base, there is ample evidence to support the notion that Trump’s views on race predate his foray into the political arena.

In the early 1970s, the US justice department sued Trump Management for racial discrimination against African Americans at their rental properties in New York. Trump, who was named as a defendant, settled the case.

And in 1989, Trump ran a full-page ad calling for the death penalty for five black and Latino men in the notorious Central Park Five case. The men, who were convicted of rape, were later exonerated based on DNA evidence. That did not stop Trump, however, from continuing to insist they were guilty while campaigning for president more than decades later.