Omarosa tapes not honorable, but no honor among thieves
WASHINGTON » It’s hard to take Omarosa Manigault Newman’s word for anything. But Lordy she has tapes, and they offer vivid proof Donald Trump’s White House is part clown show, part nest of vipers.
Omarosa appeared on Trump’s show “The Apprentice,” where she performed with Shakespearean villainy — lying, cheating, backstabbing, viciously advancing her own interests and sabotaging her rivals. Trump brought her into his administration as a top-level adviser despite her utter lack of qualifications. They deserve each other.
She wrote a tell-all book after being fired. It’s shocking that she secretly recorded her dismissal by White House chief of staff John Kelly in the Situation Room, a super-secure bunker where the nation’s secrets can safely be discussed.
In Omarosa’s recording aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Kelly makes what sounds like a threat:
“I think it’s important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure, we can all be, you know, we can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation. And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.”
Omarosa subsequently received an offer of $15,000 a month to work for Trump’s reelection campaign if she signed a nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreement pledging not to say detrimental things about Trump, Vice President Pence or their family members.
She declined the offer but kept the agreements — and showed them to The Washington Post last week.
On Monday’s “Today” show, she revealed a recording of a phone call she said she received from Trump the day after she was fired. “Omarosa, what’s going on?” Trump asks. “I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving. What happened?”
When she tells him she was axed, Trump claims ignorance. “Nobody even told me about it,” he says. “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. … Goddammit. I don’t love you leaving at all.”
After that tape aired, Trump lashed out on Twitter:
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. 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. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things. Nasty to people & 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 also complained “the Fake News Media will be working overtime” to make Omarosa seem credible now that she’s one of his critics. But that’s certainly not my intent.
She says she realized only recently that Trump’s a “racist, misogynist and bigot.” Yet she heard his bigoted attacks on Latino immigrants, his misogynistic rant about how he sexually assaulted women and his many appeals to white racial grievance and still vigorously defended him, even after Charlottesville.
So no, I’m not inclined to believe anything she claims without evidence. But the tapes and the documents have not been disputed. Omarosa may not have obtained them honorably, but the old saying is true: There is no honor among thieves.