‘This Is Not Journalism’: White House Unloads On Washington Post For ‘Tabloid Trash’ Story On Trump Housekeepers

On Wednesday, The Washington Post published another hard-hitting investigative report designed to diss Donald Trump and his family by detailing the claims of illegal immigrants formerly employed by the now-First Family. The Post’s latest Trump-disparaging piece was met with a blistering response from the White House, which called the report “fabricated tabloid trash” that is emphatically “not journalism.”

“It was important for Sandra Diaz to be invisible,” the Post’s lengthy hit-piece begins. “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 maid, 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.”

Diaz was also an illegal alien, the Post underscores — “an immigrant from Costa Rica working illegally for Trump with a fake Social Security card she had bought for $50.”

The Post goes on to inform its readers that over the last year its reporters went through the effort of speaking with 48 people “who had worked illegally for the Trump Organization at 11 of its properties in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.”

Why did the Post dedicate all the time and resources to speaking to nearly 50 of the illegal immigrant former employees of Trump and his family? The most obvious answer is what these now ex-Trump employees have said previously to the Post and other outlets:

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. 

But another reason, which becomes increasingly clear as the piece progresses, is that these former employees were able to give the Post a bunch of juicy gossip about “monarch” Trump and his “royal” family, like these gems:

Trump’s undocumented workers were forced to smile at stomach-churning comments from wealthy members once he became president. “You’re still here? How come we can’t get rid of you? I’m going to call Trump, you [expletive] Mexican,” Gabriel Juarez, who had been head waiter for a decade at one of Trump’s New York golf clubs, said a member told him jokingly.

It fell to them to scrub off the anti-Trump graffiti scrawled across the mirrors in the men’s locker room at Bedminster one day, and grit their teeth through pep talks by supervisors who they said echoed the boss’s stump speeches: “Now don’t forget, let’s make Mar-a-Lago great again.” …

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. 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.

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.

In response to the Post’s “Trump hypocrisy” piece, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham offered her assessment of the paper’s brand of investigative reporting.

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

The Post, which includes Grisham response in its piece, swiped back by noting that Grisham “did not specify which details were inaccurate” and “declined to answer questions about Trump’s longtime employment of undocumented workers and how it squares with his rhetoric about illegal immigration.”