Trump, Omarosa trade insults, charges; reality TV rerun?

WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump and former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman faced off Monday in a messy clash that involved an explosive tell-all book, secret recordings, an ethnic slur and plenty of insults — reviving their roles as reality show boss and villain.

Late Monday, Trump tackled Manigault Newman’s claim that she had heard an audiotape of him using the N-word.

He tweeted that he had received a call from the producer of “The Apprentice” assuring him “there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa.”

Trump insisted, “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have.” He said Manigault Newman had called him “a true Champion of Civil Rights” until she was fired.

Manigault Newman, the former White House liaison to black voters, writes in her new memoir that she’d heard such tapes existed. She said Sunday that she had listened to one after the book closed.

Beyond their war of words, the row touched on several sensitive issues in Trump’s White House, including a lack of racial diversity among senior officials, security in the executive mansion, a culture that some there feel borders on paranoia and the extraordinary measures used to keep ex-employees quiet.

In an unusual admission, Trump acknowledged that the public sparring was perhaps beneath a person in his position, tweeting that he knew it was “not presidential” to take on “a lowlife like Omarosa.” But he added: “This is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!”

In a series of interviews on NBC, Manigault Newman also revealed two audio recordings from her time at the White House, including portions of a

Trump signs bill named for Sen. McCain, doesn’t mention him.

FORT DRUM,

President Donald Trump on Monday signed a $716 billion defense policy bill named for John McCain but included no mention in his remarks of the Republican senator, who is battling brain cancer at home in Arizona.

Trump and McCain are engaged in a long-running feud that dates to Trump’s 2016 presidential run. At campaign rallies, Trump regularly castigates McCain — without using his name — for casting a dramatic thumbs-down vote that doomed Trump’s effort last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted by recording of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly, which she says occurred in the high-security Situation Room, and a phone call with Trump after she was fired.

Manigault Newman says she has more recordings. President Barack Obama.

Trump said there was “no better place than right here at Fort Drum” to celebrate passage of the defense bill, which will boost military pay by 2.6 percent, giving service members their largest increase in nine years.

The bill — formally the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act but referred to by Trump as simply the National Defense Authorization Act — will introduce thousands of new recruits to active duty, reserve and National Guard units and replace aging tanks, planes, ships and helicopters with more advanced and lethal technology, Trump said.

The latest tape recording appears to show Trump expressing surprise about her firing, saying “nobody even told me about it.”

But Manigault Newman said he “probably instructed General Kelly to do it.”