The latest installment of Donald Trump, real person in the world comes courtesy of the Daily Beast’s reporting on the Republican nominee’s behavior on the set of the Apprentice, where he made a habit of calling a deaf actress on the show “retarded.” To make matters more absurd, the deaf actress, who appeared on the celebrity version of the show, happened to be Academy Award winner, Marlee Matlin. Matlin won for her role in the 1986 film Children of a Lesser God and is the only deaf actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
From the Daily Beast:
“[Trump] would often equate that she was mentally retarded,” said one source, who described how kind Matlin and her interpreter Jack Jason were.
During the taping of the show, Trump would often scribble down notes while sitting at the table of “the boardroom”—the show’s primary set. A person familiar with the notes who helped clean up after tapings said that on one of the pieces of paper, Trump wrote: “Marlee, is she retarded??”
…“[Trump] would make fun of her voice. It actually sounded a lot like what he did [to] the New York Times guy,” another person who worked on The Apprentice for years told The Daily Beast, referring to when Trump mocked a disabled reporter last year. The source said this incident occurred outside the boardroom, during a break from filming. “Like, to make it seem like she was mentally not there? [It] sounded like he got a real kick out of it. It was really upsetting…”
“In the boardroom, he would talk to her like she was ‘special,’” the source said.
Oh, Trump also reportedly made inappropriate sexual comments to Matlin on set, which hardly seems like news at this point. Matlin performed at the 2011 roast of Trump on Comedy Central, which is evidence she took Trump’s comments pretty well or very badly.
