The escalating feud between onetime top presidential adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman and the Trump White House took another turn yesterday, when Manigault Newman suggested that she has a cache of videos, emails and text messages, as well as other evidence supporting the claims she makes in her new tell-all book about the Trump White House.
The assertion was made by a person with direct knowledge of the situation to The Associated Press. The person described the evidence as a multimedia “treasure trove.”
Manigault Newman described her collection the same way earlier this week in an interview with PBS. “I have a significant amount, in fact, a treasure trove, of multimedia backup for everything that’s not only in ‘Unhinged,’ but everything that I assert about Donald Trump,” she said, citing the title of her new book.
Manigault Newman harshly criticizes the President in the book, claiming he is physically and mentally ill, as well as morally unfit to be president.
“I seriously began to suspect that the president was delusional or had a mental condition, that made him forget from one day to the next. Was Donald like Ronald Reagan, impaired while everyone around him ran the show and covered up for him? Was Mike Pence his Nancy Reagan, with the same vapid, adoring looks?” she writes.
“His terrible health habits have caught up with him,” she writes in another section about the President’s physical health. “His refusal to exercise (except golf). His addiction to Big Macs and fried chicken. His daily tanning bed sessions (he prefers to do it in the morning, so he ‘looks good’ all day).”
Potentially the most damaging allegation contained in the book is that an audio recording exists of President Trump using the N-word. The tape was allegedly made during production of President Trump’s reality television show The Apprentice, where Trump first met Manigault Newman – she was a contestant on the show’s first season.
It is not yet known what season the alleged tape is from.
Manigault Newman says she called someone about the tape and that person corroborated its existence as well as its contents.
“On this phone conversation, I was told exactly what Donald Trump said – yes, the N-word and others in a classic Trump-goes-nuclear rant – and when he’d said them. During production he was miked [sic], and there is definitely an audio track. For over a year I’d been so afraid of hearing the specifics from someone who’d been in the room. Hearing the truth freed me from that fear. And only now that it’s gone, do I realise [sic] just how heavy it’s been.”
President Trump fired back at Manigault Newman’s claims.
“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…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!” he wrote on Twitter.
The President sent an even harsher tweet subsequently when he called Manigault Newman a dog.
“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
Manigault Newman was fired from the White House in December 2017. She released an audio recording of President Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly informing her of her termination in the Situation Room of the White House.
“It’s come to my attention over the last few months that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues,” Kelly can be heard saying.
At one point Manigault Newman asks Kelly is President Trump is aware that she is being let go.
“This is a non-negotiable discussion,” Kelly says.
“I don’t want to negotiate,” Manigault Newman responds. “I just, I’ve never talked — had a chance to talk to you, General Kelly, so if this is my departure, I’d like to have at least an opportunity to understand.”
“We can, we can talk another time. This has to do with some pretty serious integrity violations. So I’ll let it go at that. So the staff and everyone on the staff works for me, not the President,” Kelly says.
Manigault Newman recording the President’s Chief of Staff in the White House Situation Room raised other ethical, and possibly legal, questions. Something White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders alluded to in a statement Sunday night.
“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,” she said.
Manigault Newman defended her recordings saying it is a form of self-defense.
“I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies. The president lies to the American people. Sarah Huckabee stands in front of the country and lies every single day. You have to have your own back because otherwise you’ll look back and you’ll see seventeen knives in your back,” Manigault Newman said.
“…If I didn’t have these recordings no one in America would believe me, no one. So I protected myself and I’m gonna tell you I’m so glad I did…” she would go on to say.
Asked whether she would be releasing more recordings and on what conditions they would be released, Manigault Newman played coy, but sounded a defiant tone.
“I am not going anywhere. I’m not gonna be bullied. I’m not gonna be intimidated and I’m gonna go toe-to-toe with [President Trump]…I’ll do what I have to do to protect myself…Donald Trump has met his match,” she said.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons