The meta-soap opera of Omarosa
Was former reality star fired? Did she quit? Days later — does anybody really care?
WASHINGTON— As the spooling drama of Omarosa Manigault Newman’s White House departure spun into its 36th hour, Washington began asking itself: “Does it actually matter whether Omarosa quit or was fired?
“Dumbest story ever,” tweeted John Harwood, the CNBC reporter.
His message was liked more than 17,000 times, but still the saga of her dramatic exit Tuesday night from the Trump administration churned on through Thursday — a reality television show that just couldn’t find its way to the closing credits.
“Omarosa” continued trending on social media. The name crawled across cable news chyrons and resurfaced at the White House daily press briefing. It more than held its own in a pair of news cycles already plenty busy with the Alabama Senate race upset, the troubled tax reform plan and the massive Disney-Fox deal. Omarosa. Omarosa. Omarosa. All the players in the meta-soap opera surrounding the former reality TV star’s departure from the rela- tively un-consequential job of director of communications at the White House Office of Public Liaison kept the story going. Anonymous White House officials shared details of her exit with political reporters. Manigault Newman gave an exclusive morning show interview. White House correspondents kept trying to get to the bottom of the story.
“Why are the taxpayers continuing the pay her salary for another month if she resigned?” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny asked press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House press briefing.
“The president likes Omarosa,” Sanders said. She confirmed again that Manigault Newman had resigned but would be paid until Jan. 20 because “there’s a lot of different protocols that take place in the government.”
Other White House sources were quoted in gossipy stories detailing how Manigault had “tripped the alarm” while trying to barge into the White House residence to take up her case with President Trump before she was escorted out. The New York Post ran an illustration on its cover of Manigault being dragged from the executive mansion.
Manigault disputed those stories in her interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, saying she left of her own volition but hinting that certain aspects of her 11-month stay made her “unhappy.”
“When I have my story to tell as the only African-American woman in this White House; as a senior staff and assistant to the president, I have seen things that have made me uncomfortable, that have upset me, that have affected me deeply and emotionally, that has affected my community and my people,” Manigault said. “And when I can tell my story, it is a profound story that I know the world will want to hear.”
The political narrative on her time in the White House has already been written — and it doesn’t reflect well on her. Story after story described her wandering the halls of the White House aimlessly or ineffectively representing Trump before the groups she was hired to cultivate. Her appearance during a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists convention devolved into a screaming match, for instance.
She seemed cast in the same role in the White House that she had on The Apprentice, where she was the show’s elegant and icy villain competing for Trump’s favour. “I’m not here to make friends,” she said then, and butted heads with almost everyone.