Trump on Omarosa: ‘Good work by General Kelly for firing that dog’
Donald Trump described his former employee Omarosa Manigault Newman as a dog yesterday amid their dispute over White House tapes, a revealing memoir and claims of racist slurs.
The latest twist came after Ms Manigault Newman released audio recordings from her time in the White House and promoted her book, Unhinged, in which she claims Mr Trump used a racially denigrating word while filming The Apprentice.
The US president’s response has been to publicly denigrate one of the few African-Americans to work on his staff.
“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,” he said on Twitter. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog.”
Their row has highlighted a string of awkward issues for Mr Trump’s government, including a lack of racial diversity among staffers, questions about security and a culture of paranoia.
Ms Manigault Newman rose to fame as an outspoken, sharp-elbowed competitor on the first season of The Apprentice in 2004. She grew into her role of TV villain with high-profile clashes on The Celebrity Apprentice, much to Mr Trump’s amusement.
“Omarosa always promises and delivers high drama,” he once wrote on Twitter.
That reputation followed Ms Manigault Newman to the White House last year when she was appointed director of communications for the office of public liaison. She was fired in December.
Her memoir, published yesterday, accuses Mr Trump of using racial slurs and says recordings exist of him using the “N” word.
Ms Manigault Newman also released audio recordings of her time at the White House in interviews with NBC.
In one, which she said was made inside the high-security situation room, Chief of Staff John Kelly could be heard apparently offering her the chance to resign before being fired.
“It’s come to my attention over the past few months that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you,” Mr Kelly says.
Ms Manigault Newman said she recorded important conversations, including a call with the president in which he says no one told him she had been fired, to protect her from threats.
She also claimed she had been offered $15,000 (Dh55,100) a month to work on Mr Trump’s re-election campaign and sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she said was an attempt to silence her.
Ms Manigault Newman’s actions attracted condemnation for raising the risk that confidential conversations could leak from inside the White House’s most secure room.
Critics of Mr Trump said it exposed security flaws, and the deep dysfunction of his team.
David Axelrod, who served as Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist, tweeted: “Everyone says the Donald Trump White House is like reality TV.
“But it feels more like the Jerry Springer Show, with unsympathetic, estranged friends and relatives learning of betrayals, throwing punches and chairs at each other.”
Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s lawyer, said the recordings might have broken the law.
As the argument about White House ethics, staffing and security rumble on, Mr Trump has taken to publicly deriding his former employee.
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired three times on The Apprentice, now got fired for the last time,” he wrote on Monday.
“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.”