With Donald Trump making headlines for insulting Mexicans, prisoners of war and now women, it's worth noting that he sharpened his teeth in the politics of insensitive put-downs more than 20 years ago in a Connecticut dispute.
It was 1993, and Trump's target at the time was the Mashantucket Pequots, whose Foxwoods casino and high-stakes bingo hall was less than two years old but had already eclipsed the big hotels of Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
"They don't look like Indians to me," Trump said to a congressional subcommittee inquiring about organized crime and policing in Native American casinos. "They don't look like Indians to Indians."
The remark drew instant calls of racism. It still resonates in Connecticut, where Foxwoods and later Mohegan Sun grew to employ a total of more than 20,000 people before retrenching in recent years.
Trump, at the time, had his sights set on a casino in Bridgeport. He showed up in December of that year at the inauguration party for a Democrat named Joseph Ganim, newly elected mayor of the Park City — and took a shot at Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., who opposed casino expansion.
Weicker, a former Republican, was Trump's fellow straight-talker and political independent who tended to speak quickly — but wisely, unlike Trump. He didn't hesitate the next morning when reporters asked for a response.
"My opposition isn't just to casinos in Bridgeport, it's to Donald Trump," Weicker said. "I came to a very fast conclusion that we don't need that dirtbag in Connecticut."
Trump called Weicker "a fat slob who couldn't get elected dog catcher in Connecticut." He telephoned The Courant from his private jet to say that the governor should "concentrate on losing 125 pounds" instead of worrying about Trump's business.
"It's obvious that those so-called Indians have done a major number on his head," Trump said.
He hired lawyer John Droney, the former Democratic state chairman, and lobbyist Carroll Hughes, to represent him in the state. But, Droney said Monday, he wasn't representing Trump at the time of those remarks about Native Americans.
"He wouldn't have said that if I had been with him," quipped Droney, a partner at Hinckley Allen in Hartford.
Weicker, in an interview that week for "Face the State" on WFSB-TV, Channel 3, with Duby McDowell and Mark Pazniokas, conceded that his language might have gone too far. As for the fat comment, he offered the classic W.C. Fields retort:
"I can lose weight a lot faster than a bigot can lose bigotry."
Trump's remarks to the House Native American Affairs subcommittee had amazed some in Congress for their irresponsibility, not just fleetingly but for a full hour, as The Courant's David Lightman, who's still covering Washington politics for McClatchy, reported. Trump said it was "obvious" that the Mafia had infiltrated the Native American casinos.
"An Indian chief is going to tell Joey Killer to please get off his reservation? It's unbelievable to me." Asked what an Indian looks like, Trump said, "You know … you know."
Cut to the present, and there have been no public allegations of organized crime at the Connecticut casinos.
The tribes are embroiled in a controversy in which they could receive favorable treatment from the state in developing a casino near Hartford — against the legal objections of MGM Resorts.
Connecticut again has a governor who speaks bluntly and doesn't shy from a squabble with political figures in other states.
The Greenwich mansion that Trump bought in 1982 with his then wife, Ivana, which sold in 1998 for $15 million, is back on the market for $54 million, according to reports in the Connecticut Post and Journal News of Westchester.
Bridgeport never got a casino despite a fierce flurry of lobbying by Trump, the Mashantucket Pequots and Mirage Resorts soon after John Rowland succeeded Weicker in 1995. Rowland picked the tribe as the preferred developer, which must have made Trump seethe, but lawmakers rejected the plan.
Trump proffered other ideas that went nowhere, then donated his 6 Bridgeport acres to the city —which built a minor league baseball stadium for the Bluefish baseball team.
And after seven years in prison for corruption, Ganim is back, seeking his old office.
Droney said Monday that his experience with the developer as a client was "very positive," and that he's surprised at the way Trump has talked his way into so much trouble this summer — although he was sometimes incendiary even in private.
"He's usually a lot more careful in what he says," Droney said. "If he sounds bombastic, it's because he thought about it."