What the maid knows

Remember those undocumented housekeepers at Trump's golf club who ratted him out?  They have more to say.

It was important for Sandra Diaz to be invisible.

Before entering the Trump family villa, she would tie back her hair, pull on latex gloves and step into delicate paper shoe coverings. She knew not to wear makeup or perfume that might leave the faintest trace of her presence.

As Donald Trump’s personal housekeeper, Diaz was dealing with a fussy celebrity owner who presided like a monarch over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster long before he was elevated to president. She was an immigrant from Costa Rica working illegally for Trump with a fake Social Security card she had bought for $50. Being invisible was her life’s work.

[...]

Moving quickly through the two-story house in the mornings, Diaz carried out Trump’s fastidious instructions. In his closet, she would hang six sets of identical golf outfits: six white polo shirts, six pairs of beige pants, six neatly ironed pairs of boxer shorts. She would smear a dollop of Trump’s liquid face makeup on the back of her hand to make sure it hadn’t dried out.

  WaPo

It's makeup?? I guess that explains the seeming absence of a tanning bed in the White House, but it doesn't explain those perfectly goggle-shaped white areas around his eyes. I thought that might be from spray-on tanning stuff, but hand-applied makeup?? (More about this later.)

The years of service that Diaz and other undocumented immigrant housekeepers, cooks, landscapers, greenskeepers, waiters, bellhops, farm hands and caddies devoted to the Trump Organization have given them a remarkable vantage point into the unvarnished lives of the now-first family.

[...]

Their recollections also show how Trump’s entrance into presidential politics — denouncing illegal immigrants as criminals and job-stealers — upended their lives and prompted some of them to publicly confront their former boss.

Over the past year, The Washington Post has spoken with 48 people who had worked illegally for the Trump Organization at 11 of its properties in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Virginia. These workers spent years — and in some cases nearly two decades — performing the manual labor that keeps Trump’s resorts clean and their visitors fed.

This story is based on interviews with these workers, many of whom were fired or walked away from their jobs after media reports about their employment.

[...]

The Post sent White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham a list of the anecdotes that former undocumented employees told about the Trumps’ private quarters at Bedminster and his in-laws.

“The assertions made for this story are not only false, they are a disgusting attempt at invading the privacy of the First Family,” Grisham wrote in response. “This is not journalism — it is fabricated tabloid trash.”

Yeah, yeah.

Grisham did not specify which details were inaccurate. She also declined to answer questions about Trump’s longtime employment of undocumented workers and how it squares with his rhetoric about illegal immigration.

The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

[...]

There were three questions nearly every immigrant who worked for him was asked as Trump strolled the grounds of his resorts and golf clubs inspecting their work. “Your name. How much time you’d been there. And if you like it,” said Margarita Cruz, a housekeeper. This banter often ended with Trump pulling out $50 and $100 bills for tips.

This transactional relationship of discreet service for long hours and often low pay began to evolve as Trump entered politics on the promise to keep out the upward-striving immigrant workers who crumbed his table and scoured his toilets. When Trump referred to some Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, when he vowed to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent an immigrant “invasion,” the worry and anger began to build in the kitchens and laundry rooms of his properties.

[...]

So one day, Diaz, along with Victorina Morales, her successor as Trump’s housekeeper at Bedminster, decided to be seen.

When they spoke in articles in The Post, the New York Times and other publications beginning last December, it was not for money — as some of their shocked and frightened colleagues assumed — or really for politics, they said, but to highlight what they consider a glaring hypocrisy.

Trump, despite his rhetoric, had long employed illegal immigrants, and they were the living proof.

[...]

A year later, Diaz and Morales no longer work for Trump. No one is known to have been deported because of the women’s actions, and there is no evidence of legal repercussions for Trump or his company. But the pair have endured the anger of friends and colleagues who say they have betrayed a code of silence that permeates the nation’s underground economy.

They say it was worth it.

[...]

[T]he undocumented workers were often left to perform the most intimate and personal work. Those who cooked and served Trump knew that he liked his cheeseburgers well-done and his Diet Coke in small glass bottles with a plastic straw that no one could be seen touching.

Trump loved Tic Tacs. But not an arbitrary amount. He wanted, in his bedroom bureau at all times, two full containers of white Tic Tacs and one container that was half full.

WTF?

The same rule applied to the Bronx Colors-brand face makeup from Switzerland that Trump slathered on — two full containers, one half full — even if it meant the housekeepers had to regularly bring new shirts from the pro shop because of the rust-colored stains on the collars. A special washing machine in the laundry room was reserved for his wife Melania Trump’s clothing.

What's with the half-full shit? I can't even imagine what that's about.

Donald Trump liked Irish Spring bar soap in his shower. But his housekeepers quickly learned not to throw out his soap even if it had worn down to the tiniest sliver: Trump decided when he wanted something discarded. When that happened, with clothes or newspapers, he would toss them on the floor.

So somebody has to bend over to pick up his trash.

A regular recipient of Trump’s castoff clothing was Melania’s father, Viktor Knavs, Diaz and Morales said.

“They’re the same size and everything,” Morales said.

That's really demeaning. Hand-me-downs from the rich relatives.

But, Trump drew the line at the MAGA hat on the golf course...

One day in 2013, Viktor Knavs went out to play golf wearing one of Trump’s discarded red baseball caps. When Trump spotted him on the fairway, he blew up, and he ordered his father-in-law, in front of other golfers, to remove the hat and get off the course. Diaz and Morales were in the villa when Knavs returned, threw the hat on the ground and cursed Trump.

[...]

“Nobody could wear the red hat but [Trump],” Diaz said.

“The whole world saw what Trump had done to his father-in-law,” Morales added. “[Knavs] was very embarrassed.”

[...]

Knavs and his wife, Amalija Knavs, were favorites of the Bedminster staff, even if much was lost in translation from Slovenian to Spanish. Amalija Knavs would often cook breakfast in the villa for Melania while Trump regularly ate breakfast in the clubhouse.

Her parents, apparently, are considered on the same level as the help.

The White House did not make the Knavses available for comment.

You have to go through the White House to get to talk to them???

This Post article is actually more about the repurcussions and results of the two undocumented workers going public. It's not only a gossip fest. I'm just feeling less than noble this morning.

So, read the whole thing for the concern about immigrants.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.