| | | Trump Rants Against Rat Infestation While His Properties Are Health Code Horror Shows
Over the past few days, President Donald Trump has been on an extended Twitter tirade, going off on what he deems to be the rat infestation plaguing the city of Baltimore. And if anyone should know about the plague of vermin, it’s Trump.
The president’s restaurants, resorts, and golf clubs have all been cited for extensive health-code violations, including the presence of rodents.
Health inspectors have for years turned in stomach-churning reports of rats, mice, cockroaches, and other pests in the kitchens and food-preparation areas at Trump properties in New York, Florida, and Las Vegas. One infestation in the main kitchen of Trump’s Doral golf club in 2015 was so bad that health inspectors recommended that the place be temporarily shut down.
As late as last year, health inspectors in New York reported a likely rodent problem at the restaurant in the president’s flagship Trump Tower property. The inspection turned up “evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or non-food areas” and “conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist.”
Trump’s Roach-Infested Restaurants Are Vile Compared to the Red Hen
In 2017, inspectors found “filth flies” buzzing around the food in the Trump Tower kitchen. Employees, they found in a separate inspection the same year, sported “soiled” garments and were not wearing hair nets. The year before, inspectors found live roaches.
Trump Tower’s roach situation, though, paled in comparison to the infestation at Doral, where Florida authorities reported 524 health-code violations from 2013 to 2018, according to state health records and research compiled by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge.
In 2015, they found “approximately 20-25 live roaches... on the walls, baseboards and floors in the kitchen food prep area and behind a utensil table inside a wall crack.” They also reported between 20 and 30 “live, small flying insects... in the kitchen and dishwasher room.”
Inspectors recommended that the state issue an emergency order and temporarily shutter the Doral kitchen. It’s not clear if it was ever actually shut down. |
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