GOP front runner Donald Trump is opening a campaign office in a building belonging to a prominent New York businessman who has been accused of being a racist, according to Time Warner Cable News.
Trump's campaign will have an office in Carl Paladino’s Ellicott Square Building, according to TWC. The office is expected to open early next week. Aside from being a developer, Paladino sits on the Buffalo school board and has run for state governor. He also has a penchant for sending wildly inappropriate spam that has included bestiality and racial slurs.
Paladino has been a vocal supporter of Trump and has also talked about having the real estate mogul-turned-politician visit upstate New York cities and holding rallies for him, according to TWC.
And while the Trump campaign has been accused of being racist, Paladino has his own issues with the accusation.
In February, Paladino accused colleagues on the school board of slandering him by calling him racist.
“They slander me, okay, consistently by calling me a racist,” Paladino had said. “If they keep up the nonsense, and playing the race card, and playing this sexist thing, you know — it just so happens that the minority group is African-American and they’re women."
Paladino was accused of berating and menacingly following the school district's general counsel, an African-American woman. Another board member said Paladino has a pattern of bullying black women in positions of power. Things have gotten so ugly with Paladino and the woman that they had to be physically separated during a heated confrontation.
Most damning perhaps are emails Paladino sent out broadly, containing an array of sexually-explicit and racist content. The emails were sent to politicians, people in the media and local officials.
According to WNY Media, the images included pictures of a woman having intercourse with a horse, and a picture depicting black people near a propeller plane with the caption, "Run n*****s run." Another photo featured a Photoshopped image of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dressed in "blaxploitation" garb and yet another portrays African people as chimps.
Last week, Paladino launched a campaign to bully and harass New York Republicans into supporting Trump, according to Syracuse.com, using"targeted" emails.
"This is the beginning," Paladino said of an email directed at U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik. "This is the nice one. It's going to get worse for those that continue to hold out. I'm being nice."
In an email targeting Stefanik published by TWC, Paladino accuses her of being a "Republican in Name Only" or RINO. It's not clear if this is the same email he was referring to.
“She drinks the cool aid (sic). Clearly she’s a fraud,” Paladino wrote. “She never told the people she was a RINO Washington elitist establishment sell-out.”
