Trump reportedly wanted to fire employees who weren't 'pretty enough'

Trump at the opening of The Trump National Golf Club.

(Image credit: Matthew Simmons/Getty Images)

last updated 30 September 2016

Multiple managers and directors at California's Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes complained under oath that they were pressured to fire overweight women and only hire attractive employees, The Los Angeles Times reports. "I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were 'not pretty enough' and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women," said the former director of catering at the club, Hayley Strozier, in a 2008 court filing.

In an effort to please Trump, Strozier recalled that managers would only have their most attractive women working when the big boss showed up at the club.

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Strozier, the former catering director, said Vincent Stellio — a former Trump bodyguard who had risen to become a Trump Organization vice president — approached her in 2003 about an employee that Strozier thought was talented.Stellio wanted the employee fired because she was overweight, Strozier said in her legal filing."Mr. Stellio told me to do this because 'Mr. Trump doesn't like fat people' and that he would not like seeing [the employee] when he was on the premises,” wrote Strozier, who said she refused the request. (Stellio died in 2010.) [The Los Angeles Times]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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