Trump isn't shy about bringing up race in public either. During testimony on Capitol Hill in 1993, he said the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut, the owners of what was at the time the largest casino in the world, of not being authentic. "Well, you go up to Connecticut, and you look," Trump told the House Subcommittee on Native American Affairs on October 5, 1993. "Now, they don't look like Indians to me." Trump also accused tribes of being incapable of regulating their casinos. He claimed the Indian gaming industry was going to be overrun by organized crime, a charge that hasn't panned out. "But to sit here and listen as people are saying that there is no organized crime, that there is no money laundering, that there is no anything, and that an Indian chief is going to tell Joey Killer to please get off his reservation is almost unbelievable to me," Trump said.
Despite his vitriol, Trump later got in bed with tribal casinos. His record, though, was spotty -- the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians in California ended its relationship with the mogul after just three years. "Is Donald THAT hard to get along with??" the Original Pechanga Blog asked. Trump is leading the field of Republican candidates, according to polls. Get the Story:
Trump’s Instinct for Racially Charged Rhetoric, Before His Presidential Bid (The New York Times 8/1)
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