Joe Biden, Donald Trump campaigns clash over report accusing the former president of using the N-word

NEW YORK CITY – While waiting for a jury verdict in his New York hush money trial, former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden's campaigns clashed Thursday over a report that Trump used the N-word 20 years ago to describe a Black contestant on "The Apprentice."

"No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man," said Jasmine Harris, Black media director for the Biden campaign.

"Anyone notice a pattern?" she added. Harris was referencing Trump's public comments on the Central Park Five, a group of black and Latino teenagers who had been wrongly convicted of an assault on a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989. Trump spent $85,000 to take out a newspaper ad calling for the teenagers' executions. 

She also appeared to reference Trump's history with spreading conspiracy theories about where former President Barack Obama was born

The Trump campaign called the report, published by Slate on Thursday, a lie designed to help Biden with Black voters as he seeks another term in office.

Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign called the claims "completely fabricated" and said they were "already peddled in 2016."

"Nobody took it seriously then, and they won’t now, because it’s fake news," he said.

The allegation was part of a story written by Bill Pruitt, a former "The Apprentice" producer who said a non-disclosure agreement he signed in the early years of the show expired this year.

During the show's first season in 2004, when aspiring businessman Kwame Jackson was a finalist, Trump reportedly asked members of his production team, "would America buy a n— winning?”

Wrote Pruitt: "None of us thinks to walk out the door and never return. I still wish I had."

This incident has been rumored for years, complete with claims of a tape. No such tape has ever surfaced.

The report immediately sparked a clash between Trump and Biden's reelection campaign. Speaking for the current president's campaign, Harris said Trump is "exactly who Black voters know him to be."

Cheung said now that Biden and his fellow Democrats know they "are losing the election and Black voters are rejecting their policies, they are bringing up old fake stories from the past because they are desperate.”

Black voters support Biden 64%-12%, according to an exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released earlier this month. However, that's still far short of the 87% who voted for him in 2020.

Contributing: Susan Page, Sudiksha Kochi and Rachel Barber