Donald Trump’s longtime butler Anthony Senecal told NBC News Thursday that President Barack Obama should be “hung … from the portico of the White Mosque — it used to be the White House.”
It was the latest inflammatory statement from the servant turned unpaid Mar-a-Lago historian, whose Facebook post arguing Obama should’ve been “shot as an enemy agent in his first term,” first reported by Mother Jones, prompted a Secret Service investigation.
The agency released a statement Thursday saying they were “aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation.”
But in a phone interview with NBC News, Senecal stood by his remarks in the Facebook post and went even further, saying the president’s children were “rent-a-kids” because he felt they didn’t look sufficiently like their parents, and that Muslims should be shot or bombed in the U.S.
“There’s more than some issues with [President Obama] — he’s a goddamn traitor, T-R-A-I-T-O-R,” Senecal said. “I think he should be hung. I think he should be hung next to Hillary Clinton, and I think it should be public, I think it should be televised.”
He added: “I think it ought to be done from the portico of the White Mosque — it used to be the White House.”
Senecal said “it’s a good possibility” that President Obama is a Muslim, and “I know he was” born in Kenya, though he admitted he can’t prove it.
Of the Obama’s children, Senecal said he felt they may not actually be related to the president and his wife because, “first of all, they don’t even look like him. There’s no notification of their birth. I haven’t seen a baby picture yet.”
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Senecal also expressed frustration over Muslims, saying, “I do not like them, any of them … I don’t trust them.” He added that the few American Muslims he knows are “nice people,” though he had harsh words for Muslim immigrants.
“But the boatloads they’re bringing in here, I have no use for,” he said. “I think they ought to be shot at the shore.”
Senecal said Muslims have “just totally disgraced” some cities in the U.S., naming Detroit and Milwaukee as examples, and suggested the U.S. “designate those as nuclear bomb sites.”
“We need to bomb em out,” he said. “I could care less if they’re in the U.S. — I don’t want em in the U.S., they don’t belong here. They belong in the sand dunes where they came from.”
While Senecal’s proposals for handling Muslims in the states are more extreme than the Muslim ban proposed by his employer, the two share a skepticism of Islamic followers and President Obama’s citizenship. Still, Senecal said repeatedly he had never discussed his political views with his employer, choosing rather to air them on Facebook when “I get really ticked off.”
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It was precisely that — a Facebook post — that drew Senecal fresh scrutiny Thursday, after Mother Jones reported on a post in which he said “our pus headed ‘president’ … should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term!!!!!” The post was only accessible to those who are friends with Senecal on Facebook, but according to Mother Jones, the former Trump butler has a long history of writing such posts attacking the president, Hillary Clinton and other politicians while promoting his former employer. In one from 2015, Senecal called Clinton “Killery Clinton” and said “she should be in prison awaiting hanging,” according to Mother Jones. During the phone interview, Senecal acknowledged his posts were “absolutely controversial — and that’s the way I want it.” “I want people to start to think,” he said. But while Senecal speculated it was possible that after Trump read his comments he might tell him, “you’re fired,” he insisted that was unlikely. “He wouldn’t fire me over this — he might tell me to tone it down — but I’m sure he wouldn’t fire me,” Senecal said, describing Trump as “loyal.” Senecal confirmed the authenticity of these posts to Mother Jones, who reported on the hate-filled social media presence of the man who worked for Trump for decades, weeks after The New York Times profiled the retired butler as a gentle man keyed into Trump’s desires and moods. Senecal told Mother Jones that after he informed Trump he planned to retire in 2009, the mogul convinced him to stay on as the unofficial historian. It’s an unpaid role, but Senecal said he makes money by giving tours of the estate. Still, the Trump campaign insisted Senecal hasn’t worked for Trump “for years.” “Tony Senecal has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for years, but nevertheless we totally and completely disavow the horrible statements made by him regarding the president,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement.
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