Trump bashes ‘Wacky Omarosa’ ahead of her book alleging his anger with son
President Donald Trump blasted his firstborn son after learning he had released emails about a controversial Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-connected lawyer who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to Omarosa Manigault Newman’s forthcoming book.
Manigault Newman, who was unceremoniously fired from the White House last December, says the president erupted in anger after she met with him last July and told him she was “sorry to hear” Donald Trump Jr. had posted screenshots on Twitter of his email exchanges with British publicist Rob Goldstone.
“He is such a f---up,” Trump said of his son, according to Manigault Newman’s tell-all book, a copy of which was obtained by the New York Daily News. “He screwed up again, but this time, he’s screwing us all, big-time!”
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment. A spokesman for Trump Jr. did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
Manigault Newman’s book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” is set to hit the shelves Tuesday but has already made national headlines and paints the president as an ignorant narcissist who routinely spews racially charged and sexist language.
Earlier Monday, in a combative appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, Manigault Newman shared an audio recording of the phone conversation that she says she had with Trump the day after she was fired from his administration.
She also denounced the White House’s handling of her firing, claiming that the two-hour Situation Room meeting in which she was let go amounts to “false imprisonment.”
“There is a complete organization between the two of them,” Manigault Newman said of Trump and Kelly. “He probably instructed General Kelly to do it so that he could keep his hands clean when he spoke to me. I’m wondering, is he sincere?”
She added: “Is General Kelly running this country, or is the president running this country?”
Trump fired back at Manigault Newman with a Monday morning tweet in which he attacked his former aide as “vicious, but not smart” and claimed that “people in the White House hated her.”
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time,” Trump said. “She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok.”
Trump said he would “rarely see” Manigault Newman in the White House, a claim that contradicts reports that she enjoyed a close relationship with the president.
In two follow-up tweets, Trump continued to disparage his former aide, saying he had “heard really bad things” about her and claiming that she “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!” Trump said.
The infamous June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting, which is of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, has caused repeated headaches for the president.
The Trump campaign first insisted the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children by Americans, but the president himself backpedaled on that claim earlier this month, tweeting the sit-down was hosted by his son “to get information on an opponent.”
“Totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere,” Trump tweeted on Aug. 5. “I did not know about it.”
The Russian lawyer who attended the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has been tied to senior Kremlin officials. Emails obtained and released by Russian opposition group the Dossier Center show Veselnitskaya has been involved in the Kremlin’s efforts to overturn U.S. sanctions and extract information about anti-Kremlin activists.
Ahead of the Trump Tower meeting, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr. that Veselnitskaya had “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
Trump Jr. has maintained nothing came of the meeting, which also was attended by ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Mueller is looking into the sitdown as part of his investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, according to sources.