Trump’s apprentice has turned the tables, using his own tactics –
OMAROSA Manigault Newman’s new book comes with an explosive title, ‘Unhinged’. It has a healthy frisson of tension followed by a climactic reveal (She taped her colleagues. In the White House Situation Room). And it has just enough cliffhangers to keep readers coming back for more (She may or may not have heard a recording of US President Donald Trump using the n-word).
To Trump, this should come as no surprise. After all, Manigault Newman perfected her flair for the sensational, her cult of personality and her savvy use of media while apprenticing for the master himself: Donald Trump.
The Omarosa of popular imagination is, in large part, Trump’s creation and that creation is wreaking havoc on the White House. Manigault Newman’s controversial allegations, some of which are not verified, have rattled the president and thrust his aides into damage-control mode.
The Trump campaign said it was seeking to force the former staffer into binding arbitration under the terms of a 2016 confidentiality agreement that the campaign claimed her book violated. Manigault Newman, who held a senior staff position in the White House until being fired in December 2017, said she did not believe she had violated the contract.
“It’s interesting that he’s trying to silence me. So what is he trying to hide? What is he afraid of?” she said in an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “I think he should be afraid of being exposed as the misogynist, the bigot and the racist that he is.”
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders struggled to defend Trump against charges of racism. Pressed about whether she could guarantee that there is not a recording of Trump uttering the “n-word”, as Manigault Newman asserts, Sanders said, “I can’t guarantee anything,” though she said she had “never” heard Trump use the racist slur.
The image of the White House press secretary unable to unequivocally state the president has never uttered the most unacceptable racial slur felt like it could have been a reality television cliff hanger.
In a way, it was. Trump discovered Manigault Newman during season one of his NBC reality show, ‘The Apprentice’, as a fully formed anti-heroine. He quickly realised her particular brand of mischief-making narcissism was a ratings bonanza. She returned for two spin-offs, as well as a shortlived dating show collaboration.
“Omarosa always promises and delivers high drama,” Trump tweeted in 2013. “Honest Omarosa: she won’t backstab – she’ll come at you from the front.”
Trump, who at the time was trying to make the move from tabloid curiosity to full-blown celebrity, was mesmerised by how well audiences responded to Manigault Newman as a captivating character, according to Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien. In her, Trump saw a reflection of himself.
In a Bloomberg column calling them “kindred spirits”, Mr O’Brien wrote: “The future president was fascinated by her. He was fascinated by her self-absorption and nastiness, fascinated by her fleeting star power and fascinated by the fact that she was publicly recognisable by her first name alone, sort of like Prince or Madonna.”
Manigault Newman followed Trump into politics. On the 2016 campaign, she was one of Trump’s most steadfast defenders against accusations of racism and sexism – the very charges she is now levelling against him.
Then in the White House, she reprised her role as villain, feuding with West Wing staff and allegedly shirking her duties before being dismissed by chief of staff John Kelly.
Now, like in the ‘Jurassic Park’ film series – in which the dinosaurs turn on the scientists who created them – Manigault Newman has unleashed Trump’s own tricks and tactics on him.
“She’s doing Trump as well or better than he is,” said Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chairman. “This is his mini-me. He created Omarosa. Now, after having created this monster that’s coming back on him, what’s he going to do?”
The answer, for now at least, is tweet. The president has hurled one insult after another at his one-time protégé. Over the past few days, Trump has tweeted that Manigault Newman is a “dog”, a “lowlife”, “wacky”, “deranged”, “vicious” and “not smart”.
This is a departure from the praise the two have lavished on each other over the years. During a 2016 campaign stop in Detroit, Trump called Manigault Newman “a very nice person”.
“But I don’t want to say that because I’ll destroy her image by saying that,” Trump said, referring to her ‘Apprentice’ caricature. “But she’s actually a very, very fine person and a pastor.”
WITH Manigault Newman hopscotching television studios to promote her book, Trump’s advisers had hoped he would refrain from engaging her to avoid drawing attention to her allegations and help boost sales. At her Tuesday briefing, Sanders would not utter her former colleague’s name, referring to Manigault Newman only as “this individual”.
Trump has shown no such restraint. Long-time Trump observers say it is a measure of his rage and sense of betrayal that he called Manigault Newman “that dog”. The president, who has an aversion to dogs and other pets, considers canine comparisons to be among his most devastating put-downs.
“I think he sort of thought of Omarosa as his invention, as in, ‘I made you and therefore you owe me forever’,” said Tony Schwartz, co-author with Trump of the 1987 book ‘The Art of the Deal’. “The fact that she turned out to be as nefarious and vicious as Trump infuriates him.”
Some who have appeared most effective countering Trump are those who employ his tactics, such as Michael Avenatti, attorney for adult-film star Stormy Daniels, and Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer now under federal investigation.
They are relentless and omnipresent. They create drama, hold news cycles hostage and dribble out tantalising nuggets. (© The Washington Post)