Anthony Senecal, a former butler at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seemed like such a sweet, if slightly reserved, old man in this role. New York Times Puff two months ago, where he shared fascinating insights from his years working for the tycoon. It was a nice little story that gave some insight into Trump. Senecal himself was almost the stereotype of a loyal house servant, a cross between Mr. Belvedere and a Florida retiree who regularly attends the early-bird specials at every chain restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard.
Who would have thought from this article that Senecal is also a racist madman? But there are his posts on Facebook, discovered by Mother Jones and went viral all over the Internet on Wednesday. In them, the former butler proposed, among other things, to “hang for high treason” “our festering “president”” and “Kenyan (sic) fraud.” kind requests.
After the Mother Jones story was published, Senecal spoke with NBC's Alexandra Yaffe. Given a chance to blame the posts on something beyond his control (temporary insanity, drunkenness, brain damage caused by years of snorting Trump hairspray), he instead doubled down. He expressed anger at the hordes of Muslims who, in his opinion, were taking over American cities and proposed they should all be “shot on the beach” instead of immigrating. And just in case, he suggested that Obama “be hanged on the portico of the White Mosque.”
On the plus side, the Secret Service, which investigates all threats against the president, is currently protecting Trump, so it will be easy for agents to track down Senecal and question him.
By the end of the day, Trump's campaign was over. damage control modeAlthough to insist that Senecal has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for “many years” is more than disingenuous. (The Times profile said the butler retired in 2009, but Trump insisted he remain as an unofficial “staff historian” and he makes money giving tours of the estate.)
This is shocking news. I mean the part where Trump immediately disowned Senecal. The fact that an angry racist parent worked for Trump for years (yes, Senecal was apparently a birther too) and his boss didn't notice, or worse, didn't care? Yes, he seems to fit in well with the rest of the Trump Organization.
After all, this is the same Donald Trump who supported his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, when allegations surfaced that Lewandowski was managing violence and misogyny from female colleagues. The same Donald Trump who has been slow to disavow his support for white supremacists like David Duke throughout this campaign. The same Donald Trump who allowed a famous white nationalist onto his list of California convention delegates. The same Donald Trump who hired Roger Stone, one of the most obscene clowns ever to make his way into American politics, as his close adviser, recently… banned from appearing on CNN after tweeting racist remarks about some online commentators.
(Stone previously claimed that he had avoided from racist campaign tactics which, if you believe it, I have East River Bridge sell you.)
And these are just examples from this campaign. There's no need to rehash every instance of racist smear in Trump's long public career. But all of this further explains the worldview that Trump has developed. He has locked himself in a bubble where he can hold court in some five-star restaurant in Manhattan, bravely recounting the details of some racial crime he read about that day in the New York Post, with no idea what his rant might sound like to the people whose check he's not receiving. He surrounded himself with racists and misogynists of all stripes and did not attract at least one or two confidants who could explain to him that he was not running for president exclusively in Alabama in the 1930s.
So why on earth would he notice if his butler was a raging lunatic while the guy was exaggerating the distance from which Trump was throwing golf balls into the Intracoastal Waterway (a real joke in the Times article)? You can imagine them on the Mar-a-Lago lawn as Senecal tells him that those 225 yards are actually 275 and nods in agreement as Trump rants about Obama's refusal to release his birth certificate.
Because this is Donald Trump: an entitled, spoiled rich boy who can't imagine that any of his statements could be cruel or racist because he's surrounded himself with people who believe the same things and wouldn't dare say otherwise unless they did because they think their livelihoods depend on keeping their mouths shut.
Anthony Senecal is an 84-year-old man, so apparently he doesn't have many years left to spew this garbage onto his Facebook wall. It should be the story of one day. Much more worrying is how this incident will be covered by the media. (I'm looking forward to a torrent of heated comments about “It's Donald Trump's Jeremiah Wright moment.”) Much more worrying is that the GOP leader will return to form and defend Senecal. But the biggest concern is that it simply won't make any difference to Trump supporters—ironically, some of them may well be the same people who have been screaming about Wright since 2008. Why should they care? The butler and his boss don't say anything they don't already truly believe.
