‘More Trumpian than Trump’: How Omarosa could destroy the President
SHE’S a larger-than-life, media-savvy character with a stack of explosive tapes and a bombshell book, poised to “out-Trump” the US President.
SHE’S been described as the only person who can “out-Trump” Donald Trump, and Omarosa Manigault-Newman is wreaking havoc on the White House with a collection of secret tapes.
The former Apprentice contestant, who was fired from the administration in December, is creating a nightmare for the President with her explosive book tour.
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Overnight, she released a tape of a conversation she allegedly had with Mr Trump a day after White House chief of staff John Kelly sacked her in the maximum security Situation Room.
She was already in the spotlight for releasing a secret recording of that conversation — and the White House reportedly fears she has dozens more tapes, which could do untold damage to the President.
The Daily Beast reported she had used the tapes as leverage to ensure the release of her bombshell new book Unhinged: An Insider Account Of The Trump White House.
Now this larger-than-life, “Trumpian” character is ready to capitalise on her insider knowledge and her covert recordings to wreak her revenge on the administration in the media.
The televised war of the reality stars has begun.
#Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. pic.twitter.com/OJe47RdcDC
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 13, 2018
‘A WHITE HOUSE WHERE EVERYBODY LIES’
The drama kicked off when Ms Manigault-Newman released a tape of an apparent conversation in the White House Situation Room, in which chief of staff John Kelly tells her she has to leave over serious “integrity issues”.
In the recording, he says that if she has “a friendly departure”, she will be able to “go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation” — remarks she says she interpreted as a threat.
Overnight, Ms Manigault-Newman released new audio of a conversation she apparently had with Mr Trump a day later, in which he claims he has no idea she has been fired.
“Omarosa, what’s going on, I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving, what happened?” says the President in the recording.
She replies: “General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.”
The President answers: “No, I — nobody even told me about it. You know they run a big operation but I didn’t know it, I didn’t know that. Goddammit.”
Ms Manigault-Newman indicated that she believed Mr Trump may have told Mr Kelly to fire her.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Monday: “I’m not going to get into the tick-tock of who knew what when, but the President makes the decisions.”
Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018
...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018
While I know it’s “not presidential†to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018
Mr Trump responded to the tape by attacking his former aide on Twitter as “Wacky Omarosa”, claiming she was “hated” in the White House and was “vicious, but not smart”.
He said Mr Kelly had wanted to fire her because she was “a loser” and “nothing but problems”, but Mr Trump had asked his chief of staff to hold off since she “said only GREAT things about me”.
Mr Trump later tweeted that Ms Manigault-Newman has a “fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!”
She claims she, like other former White House staffers, was offered a $15,000-a-month job on Trump’s 2020 campaign after she was let go — which simply consisted of staying silent. She refused.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the first recording: “The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national security. And then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee.”
WATCH: Omarosa releases secret tape of John Kelly firing from White House #MTP pic.twitter.com/KtNEiuPkqz
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 12, 2018
Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Fox And Friends: “She’s certainly violating national security regulations, which I think have the force of law.”
But Ms Manigault-Newman said she had to “protect herself” because “this is a White House where everybody lies”.
She responded to Mr Trump’s tweets by saying: “I think it’s sad that with all the things that’s going on in the country that he would take time out to insult me and to insult my intelligence.
“This is his pattern with African-Americans.”
And she suggested there was more to come: “There’s a lot of very corrupt things happening in the White House, and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of them.”
‘HE IS TRULY A RACIST’
Ms Manigault-Newman’s book describes Mr Trump as “a racist, a bigot and a misogynist”.
The most damning allegations include the shock claim she has heard tapes of Mr Trump using the N-word, and has personally witnessed him use other racial slurs.
In her book, she writes that she knows there are tapes of him using the N-word. On Sunday, she told NBC’s Meet The Press she had been played the tapes since the publication of the book.
“I’ve heard his voice,” she said. “Once I heard it for myself, it confirmed what I feared the most — that Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities.
“When he talks that way, the way he does on this tape, it confirms that he is truly a racist.”
Asked why she had not heard the tape before writing her book, she said its owner was “afraid because of the forces working to stop it coming out”.
The former Apprentice star also writes in her book that Mr Trump “hated” Barack Obama “because Obama was black” and that when she once made the case for putting black abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 note, the President said: “You want me to put that face on the $20 bill?”
She writes of how she heard him use racial slurs against White House adviser Kellyanne Conway’s half-Filipino husband George.
“Would you look at this George Conway article?” she quotes the President as saying. “F***ing FLIP! Disloyal! F***ing Goo-goo.”
The allegation is not credible, and indeed is ridiculous, particularly in light of the timing of her departure from the White House—December 12, 2017. It’s absurd all around.
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 10, 2018
No. There was one tweet, it didn’t criticize the travel ban, and it was clear at the time from my and others’ personal interactions with him that he didn’t hold it against me—not one bit. From what I saw and heard, any suggestion he would have used such slurs is preposterous.
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 10, 2018
But Mr Conway tweeted that the allegation was “absurd”.
His wife said Ms Manigault-Newman had “undercut her own credibility” after previously giving “a glowing appraisal of Donald Trump”.
And Mr Trump told reporters at a Bikers for Trump event in New Jersey on Saturday: “Low-life. She’s a low-life.”
Reporter: "Do you feel betrayed by Omarosa?"
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 11, 2018
President Trump: "Lowlife. She's a lowlife." pic.twitter.com/UeRgHSdYGJ
‘YOU GOT TO GET SOME ASS LIKE THAT’
Ms Manigault-Newman’s book includes a series of other bombshell accusations about Mr Trump’s wild behaviour.
The 44-year-old claims the President is in “mental decline” — rambling, repeating himself, speaking “gibberish” and flying into “rages” when upset. She says his wife Melania “is counting every minute until he is out of office and she can divorce him”.
She writes of one occasion during the filming of The Apprentice when she was sat at a table with Mr Trump, his son Don Jr and model Carol Alt. She alleges the future president turned to his son, whose wife Vanessa was pregnant at the time, and said: “You’ve got to get ass like that. You got to get some ass like that.”
She recounts another occasion during the campaign when she was at a meeting with Mr Trump and others and his daughter entered. “Ivanka came into the room wearing a fitted skirt. The entire meeting had to stop so (Mr Trump) could gush about her body,” she writes. “‘You look great! I like the way that skirt fits. Doesn’t Ivanka look great?’ He insisted we all agree that his daughter’s tight skirt was very flattering.”
Ms Manigault-Newman also claims there is a tanning bed in the White House and that the President wanted to be sworn in on a copy of his book The Art Of The Deal instead of the Bible.
She also says she once saw Mr Trump eat a note handed to him by lawyer Michael Cohen to stop it falling into the hands of archivists — a claim Mr Cohen denied on Twitter.
LTo the many dozens of #journalists who called me, questioning @OMAROSA claim in her new book that @POTUS @realDonaldTrump took a note from me, put it in his mouth and ate it...I saw NO such thing and am shocked anyone would take this seriously.
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) August 12, 2018
Ms Manigault-Newman has threatened to reveal the names of illegitimate children the President has allegedly fathered.
She also claims he received personal counselling from the Reverend Paula White, pastor of the non-denominational New Destiny Church in Florida.
She says Ms White blocked her from the role she wanted as head of the Office of Public Liaison, and that she was then warned by a Trump family member to “back off” because Mr Trump and Ms White had a “special relationship”.
The former TV star hints at sordid affairs in the White House, attacks “Stepford Veep” Mike Pence and education secretary Betsy “Ditzy” DeVos.
Her harshest criticism is reserved for Mr Kelly, who she says went out of his way to get rid of her and then savage her name in the press.
She denies being escorted from the White House by the Secret Service and misusing government property.
CAN OMAROSA BRING DOWN THE PRESIDENT?
Ms Manigault-Newman certainly now has reputational problems, which make her allegations more complex.
Ms Sanders on Friday called her book “riddled with lies and false accusations”, slamming the media for “giving her a platform” after not taking her seriously when she was positive about the President while working at the White House.
After appearing on three seasons of The Apprentice, she became Mr Trump’s confidante, and one of his best-known black supporters in the campaign.
In her book, she says she was working for a Clinton Pac in 2013, but could not refuse an offer to work for the real estate mogul. She says she then stayed with the Trump campaign out of loyalty and to help handle his “ever-growing woman problem”.
Once in the White House, insiders describe her as acting on Trump-like whims, including ordering desks to be moved to her West Wing office, turning up unannounced in a wedding dress for a photo shoot and doing little real work.
Insiders say she terrified some of the most powerful men in America.
“I’m scared sh*tless of her,” one former White House official told Axios. “I never said no to her … I’m afraid of getting my ass kicked.”
Another said: “One hundred per cent, everyone was scared of her.”
Like other oddball characters in this administration, she had regular contact with Mr Trump, until the relationship soured and she was cast off. But Ms Manigault-Newman’s tapes and book give her a new kind of power as she attempts to execute her revenge.
Some believe the reason she poses such a threat is because she is so much like Mr Trump.
“She may be the purest of all the Trump characters,” a senior administration official told Axios. “She may be the most Trumpian. She knows media, she knows about physical presence, like Trump does … that’s why I think he’s rattled.”
The other said: “The only reason Trump works is because he gives less of a crap than anybody in the world.
“That’s where she’s at. She’s totally undeterred by things that would freak out most people.
“She’s out-Trumping Trump right now.”
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