Trump attacked his former aide’s intelligence after the recording was released, but the White House didn’t dispute the tape’s authenticity
US President Donald Trump has lashed out at former aide and The Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman after she released a recording of a call with him in which he appeared not to know she had been let go from her White House job the day before.
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time,” Trump said in a Twitter post 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. She was vicious, but not smart.”
Manigault Newman’s latest revelation follows her release of a tape she said she had secretly made of her 2017 firing by White House chief of staff John Kelly. Trump aides have sought to aggressively counter her claims, which coincide with the release of the ex-aide’s new tell-all book.
In a phone call that Manigault Newman claims to have recorded with Trump after Kelly fired her, and which was broadcast on NBC News on Monday, a voice that sounds like Trump’s asks: “Omarosa, what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving. What happened?”
After Manigault Newman told Trump she had been fired, he responded: “No, nobody even told me about it. You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it.”
The White House has not disputed the authenticity of Manigault Newman’s recordings. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Fox News’s Fox & Friends on Monday that the thought Manigault Newman violated the law by taping Trump and other White House officials.
In Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, Manigault Newman, one of relatively few black people in the White House, accuses the president of having used racial slurs on the set of The Apprentice reality TV show, which aired on NBC.
Manigault Newman told NBC News on Monday that the title of her book was aimed directly at Trump. She said Kelly was running the administration.
“John Kelly is running this White House and Donald Trump has no clue what’s going on,” she said. “He’s being puppeted, and that’s very dangerous for this nation.”
“He absolutely has an issue with the truth, and sometimes he battles with reality,” she said of Trump.
Former Trump aide claims he used ‘the N-word’ – and there are tapes
During the taped call, Trump is heard telling Manigault-Newman of her firing, “Goddammit. I don’t love you leaving at all. Nobody even told me about it.”
Trump also said great things about Manigault Newman, until her book tour started.
“Thank you Omarosa for your service! I wish you continued success,” he tweeted in 2017.
For her own part, Manigault Newman appeared to be prepared to go to the wall for Trump as well, until she was let go.
“Every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump,” she wrote on Twitter. “It’s everyone who’s every doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
