Omarosa: Yet Another Ridiculous Member of The Circus

[GreyhoundFan]

"Omarosa Manigault Newman says she refused hush money, pens White House memoir calling Trump racist"

Spoiler

Omarosa Manigault Newman was offered a $15,000-a-month contract from President Trump’s campaign to stay silent after being fired from her job as a White House aide by Chief of Staff John F. Kelly last December, according to a forthcoming book by Manigault Newman and people familiar with the proposal.

 But she refused, according to the incendiary new book, “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House,” which also depicts Trump as unqualified, narcissistic and racist. Excerpts of the book were obtained by The Washington Post.

After she was fired, Manigault Newman wrote, she received a call from Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, offering her a job and the monthly contract in exchange for her silence.

The proposed nondisclosure agreement allegedly said Manigault Newman could not make any comments about President Trump or his family; Vice President Pence or his family; or any comments that could damage the president. It said she would do “diversity outreach,” among other things, for the campaign, according to her account. 

 “The NDA attached to the email was as harsh and restrictive as any I’d seen in all my years of television,” Manigault Newman writes in the book. 

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the book “is riddled with lies and false accusations. It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the President during her time in the administration.”

Manigault Newman does not offer evidence for some of her most explosive charges but also extensively taped her conversations in the White House. The Post has listened to several of the recordings made by Manigault Newman, which match quotations recounted in the book excerpts. The existence of some tapes was first reported Wednesday by the Daily Beast.

Manigault Newman litters the book with specific quotes from White House aides. She describes many scenes inside the White House vividly — explaining who was in the room, and exactly what was said.

The allegations threaten to become another political headache for the administration akin to another controversial book earlier this year by journalist Michael Wolff, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” which detailed a wayward White House and prompted broad denunciations from Trump and his aides. The White House had initially planned on trying to avoid commenting on Manigault Newman’s book to keep it from getting more attention, White House aides said. 

Manigault Newman is expected to appear on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning and will then go on a longer publicity tour. It comes at the first anniversary of deadly white-supremacist protests in Charlottesville, where Trump was criticized for saying there are fine people “on both sides.”

Her book is the first insider account from a White House aide that is not largely flattering toward the president. Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking black employee in the White House, calls Trump a “racist, misogynist and bigot.” She alleges in the book that there is a tanning bed in the White House residence and says the president fought with the now-departed chief usher over the installation of the bed; other aides say they have not seen a tanning bed in the White House.

Manigault Newman also writes that Trump told her he was unaware of her firing by Kelly. “No! No one even told me,” she quotes Trump as saying. “I didn’t know that. Damn it.”

Whether the book paints an accurate depiction of Trump’s conduct or amounts primarily to a disgruntled tome from a reality TV star-turned-White House aide is in dispute. Manigault Newman has known Trump for more than a decade and held one of the highest-paid positions in the West Wing for a year, securing the job as an “assistant to the president” after starring as a famed villain in his TV show, “The Apprentice,” and working for the Trump Organization.

She questions Trump’s mental state, describes him as unstable and portrays him as unable to control his impulses while describing the extensive lengths that staff members have gone to in attempts to keep him in line. 

“All we need to remember is that Trump loves the hate,” she writes in the book. “He thrives on criticism and insults. He delights in chaos and confusion. Taking to Twitter to call him names only fuels him and riles his base. To disarm him, starve his ego; don’t feed into it.”

 White House aides have long described Manigault Newman as a problematic employee who tried to stage a wedding photo shoot at the White House, exploded at other West Wing aides and left shoes strewn around the West Wing. For months, they accurately feared that she was taping conversations inside the building. In the eyes of many around Trump, the book is another publicity-grabbing stunt from a reality TV star known for them.

Even as aides warned him against it, Trump often spoke to Manigault Newman and invited her to come by the Oval Office, a practice that Kelly eventually curtailed. She served as Trump’s chief liaison to the African American community and often vouched for him.

The book is a mix of unverified accusations and vivid, quote-filled exchanges from her time with Trump on the campaign trail and in the White House. 

 For months while in the White House, Manigault Newman said she spent time searching for a rumored tape of Trump saying the n-word on tape as host of “The Apprentice.” She writes in the book without providing evidence that such a tape exists. Manigault Newman also says that other aides in the White House kept tabs on rumors of the tape. 

“By that point, three sources in three separate conversations had described the contents of this tape,” she writes. “They all told me that President Trump hadn’t just dropped a single n-word bomb. He’d said it multiple times throughout the show’s taping during off-camera outtakes, particularly during the first season of the Apprentice.”

In early 2017, Manigault Newman says she walked Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, into the Oval Office for a meeting with Trump — and saw the president chewing up a piece of paper while Cohen was leaving the office. Another White House official confirmed that Manigault Newman brought Cohen into the White House and was later rebuked for it. The two remain in contact, according to people familiar with the relationship. 

“I saw him put a note in his mouth. Since Trump was ever the germaphobe, I was shocked he appeared to be chewing and swallowing the paper. It must have been something very, very sensitive,” she writes in her book. 

There is no proof that he chewed on paper, and several White House aides laughed at the assertion and said it was not true. 

Manigault Newman also writes in the book that she was contacted in February by the FBI but does not elaborate on why they called her or what she told them.

She describes in vivid detail her firing from the Situation Room, with direct quotes attributed to Kelly and ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino.

According to her account, Kelly comes into the room and begins by saying, “We’re going to talk to you about leaving the White House.”

“The integrity issues are very serious,” Kelly continues. “If this were the military, this would be a pretty high level of accountability, meaning a court-martial . . . If we make this a friendly departure, you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation. You can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.”

Manigault Newman then begins demanding an explanation for why she was being fired and whether Trump knows. Kelly tells her it is nonnegotiable and soon leaves the room after mentioning “serious integrity issues.”

 “The staff works for me, not the president. So after your departure, I’ll inform him,” Kelly told her, according to the book. “With that, I’ll let you go.” 

She is kept in the Situation Room for more than an hour, according to her telling in the book, with her husband waiting outside. She fights with Passantino, who tells her she is being fired for abusing the government car service. She tries to explain why she used the car each time — for official government business, in her telling — to no avail.

“It’s not a fight that is winnable,” Uttam Dhillon, another lawyer, says.

Manigault Newman writes in the book that there was erroneous reporting on her exit — that she did not get into a big fight with Kelly at the White House Christmas party and that she did not try to fight her way past security and get into the residence.

“I never imagined that this ludicrous story — pure gossip — would blow up like it did,” she said. 

Passantino did not respond to a request for comment. 

Trump tells Manigault Newman that he had no idea she was ousted the day before, according to her account. “I just saw on the news you were thinking about leaving!” Trump says. “What happened?”

Manigault Newman responds that Kelly told her “you guys wanted me to leave.” Trump expresses his displeasure.

Manigault Newman said the call from Trump was followed by a call from Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, his daughter, who said she “really loves” Manigault Newman and would do anything for her.

“Call us anytime,” Kushner says on the call, according to the book. 

Then, Lara Trump called and reiterated how much the president and the family loved Manigault Newman, offering her the job and wanting to make sure “everything is positive.” 

“If you come on board, we can’t have you mention that stuff,” she added, referring to interviews Manigault Newman gave immediately after her firing.

 

[Botkinetti]

I don’t like Omarosa. I think she is a preening , ridiculous twit. Having said that , if she does have tapes , good for her for covering her own ass. The part about the trump family offering money to keep her quiet rings true to me. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"In wake of critical book, Trump calls Omarosa ‘a lowlife’"

Spoiler

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump has one word to describe former White House staffer and fellow reality-TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman: “Lowlife.”

Manigault Newman claims in an upcoming book, “Unhinged,” that Trump used racial slurs on the set of his reality show “The Apprentice.” She also says she later concluded that he is a racist and a bigot.

On Saturday, reporters asked Trump during an event at his golf club in New Jersey if he felt betrayed by Manigault Newman. He responded: “Lowlife. She’s a lowlife.”

Manigault Newman was a contestant on Trump’s “The Apprentice” reality show and later served as a senior adviser to the president. In the book, she paints Trump as scattered, self-absorbed, misogynistic and insecure.

The book is set for release Tuesday. The White House has already slammed it as “riddled with lies and false accusations.”

The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book ahead of its release. In the book, Manigault Newman claims without evidence that tapes exist of Trump using the N-word repeatedly on the reality show’s set. She acknowledges she had never been able to obtain or hear the tapes but said three unnamed sources had described their contents.

She alleges that Trump has exhibited signs of a “mental decline that could not be denied” and says she went as far as printing out a study linking Diet Coke consumption to dementia and strokes and putting it in his briefing stack. She also described him as a man who “loved conflict, chaos and confusion; he loved seeing people argue or fight.”

Manigault Newman also alleges that Trump allies tried to buy her silence after she left the White House, offering her $15,000 a month to serve in a “senior position” on his 2020 re-election campaign along with a stringent nondisclosure agreement. She says when she turned down the offer, she received letters from Trump’s lawyers telling her to stay quiet.

 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"In wake of critical book, Trump calls Omarosa ‘a lowlife’"

  Hide contents

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump has one word to describe former White House staffer and fellow reality-TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman: “Lowlife.”

Manigault Newman claims in an upcoming book, “Unhinged,” that Trump used racial slurs on the set of his reality show “The Apprentice.” She also says she later concluded that he is a racist and a bigot.

On Saturday, reporters asked Trump during an event at his golf club in New Jersey if he felt betrayed by Manigault Newman. He responded: “Lowlife. She’s a lowlife.”

Manigault Newman was a contestant on Trump’s “The Apprentice” reality show and later served as a senior adviser to the president. In the book, she paints Trump as scattered, self-absorbed, misogynistic and insecure.

The book is set for release Tuesday. The White House has already slammed it as “riddled with lies and false accusations.”

The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book ahead of its release. In the book, Manigault Newman claims without evidence that tapes exist of Trump using the N-word repeatedly on the reality show’s set. She acknowledges she had never been able to obtain or hear the tapes but said three unnamed sources had described their contents.

She alleges that Trump has exhibited signs of a “mental decline that could not be denied” and says she went as far as printing out a study linking Diet Coke consumption to dementia and strokes and putting it in his briefing stack. She also described him as a man who “loved conflict, chaos and confusion; he loved seeing people argue or fight.”

Manigault Newman also alleges that Trump allies tried to buy her silence after she left the White House, offering her $15,000 a month to serve in a “senior position” on his 2020 re-election campaign along with a stringent nondisclosure agreement. She says when she turned down the offer, she received letters from Trump’s lawyers telling her to stay quiet.

 

You know, I'm honestly surprised that he didn't insult her intelligence. He usually does that whenever he gets upset with a black person.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"In wake of critical book, Trump calls Omarosa ‘a lowlife’"

  Hide contents

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump has one word to describe former White House staffer and fellow reality-TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman: “Lowlife.”

Manigault Newman claims in an upcoming book, “Unhinged,” that Trump used racial slurs on the set of his reality show “The Apprentice.” She also says she later concluded that he is a racist and a bigot.

On Saturday, reporters asked Trump during an event at his golf club in New Jersey if he felt betrayed by Manigault Newman. He responded: “Lowlife. She’s a lowlife.”

Manigault Newman was a contestant on Trump’s “The Apprentice” reality show and later served as a senior adviser to the president. In the book, she paints Trump as scattered, self-absorbed, misogynistic and insecure.

The book is set for release Tuesday. The White House has already slammed it as “riddled with lies and false accusations.”

The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book ahead of its release. In the book, Manigault Newman claims without evidence that tapes exist of Trump using the N-word repeatedly on the reality show’s set. She acknowledges she had never been able to obtain or hear the tapes but said three unnamed sources had described their contents.

She alleges that Trump has exhibited signs of a “mental decline that could not be denied” and says she went as far as printing out a study linking Diet Coke consumption to dementia and strokes and putting it in his briefing stack. She also described him as a man who “loved conflict, chaos and confusion; he loved seeing people argue or fight.”

Manigault Newman also alleges that Trump allies tried to buy her silence after she left the White House, offering her $15,000 a month to serve in a “senior position” on his 2020 re-election campaign along with a stringent nondisclosure agreement. She says when she turned down the offer, she received letters from Trump’s lawyers telling her to stay quiet.

 

And here we all were, thinking he was only going to hire the best people, the very best.

I don’t think he realizes that by calling Omarosa a lowlife, he’s admitting to a severe lack of judgment when he hired her as one of his closest advisors.

[AmazonGrace]

They deserve each other

[apple1]

They deserve each other. That's the truth.

[AmazonGrace]

Omarosa recorded her own firing and wanted the tape out there saying it proves she didn't storm Trump's residence ( but I don't see how it proves anything)

 

 

[Howl]

Yeah, so everyone can only hope that Omarosa's phone wasn't hacked as she recorded here, there and everywhere in the WH.  It's a huge security breach. 

I don't think too many people are taken in by Omarosa.  

[fraurosena]

Other than that it's quite telling that Omarosa felt the need to tape her firing, the fact that she could tape at all in the Situation Room is quite disturbing. Not only because she could have been hacked, as @Howl astutely points out, but even more so because if she could, then so could others. Like those Russians, for example. And there is no doubt in my mind that those tapes are being used as kompromat. Not only on the presidunce, but anyone and everyone that was in the Situation Room at the time the conversations were taped  -- Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, McTurtle, Lyin' Ryan, to name but a few. This is the reason why so many Repugs are desperately trying to protect the presidunce, even if it means going against everything they have ever stood for in the past.

 

[candygirl200413]

Remember orange fuckface has been using a non-secured phone since coming into office. This office could care less about security.

[Cartmann99]

 Katrina Pierson has been dispatched:

 

[Howl]

Could it be that Omarosa never forgets a slight or an insult is simply driven by a profound need for revenge?  Honestly, she and Trump are made for each other. 

[Cartmann99]

I keep thinking about how Omarosa's husband is a pastor. Don't the other women in the church usually look up to the pastor's wife, and see her as a role model? 

[onekidanddone]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Omarosa recorded her own firing and wanted the tape out there saying it proves she didn't storm Trump's residence ( but I don't see how it proves anything)

 

 

Do they have any security at the WH at all? You can bet if it was Obama the howlers would be screeching treason. This is scary as fuck. We have no national security anymore 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

I keep thinking about how Omarosa's husband is a pastor. Don't the other women in the church usually look up to the pastor's wife, and see her as a role model? 

It's even worse. Omarosa herself is an ordained Baptist minister.

[AmazonGrace]

Can't read this because of GDPR 

anyone able to share a screenshot?

[AmazonGrace]

Never mind there was one in the thread  

Kellyanne can't name anyone

[Cartmann99]

@AmazonGrace, another person on Twitter gave this link to the agreement. I'm hoping since it doesn't go to WaPo, that you can access it.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4753901-Proposed-Consulting-Agreement-and-Companion.html#document

Page six has her name and address.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "Omarosa’s book isn’t news, but what she did sure is"

Spoiler

Omarosa Manigault Newman’s new book, filled with unsubstantiated allegations and implausible claims — she did not know President Trump was a racist before she arrived at the White House? — would not, I would submit, normally constitute serious news. Putting someone with low credibility on air to sell books does a disservice to Americans and lowers the already low atmosphere of public debate. Let her sell her books on “The View” or on late-night comedy shows. However, when she has tapes allegedly made within the confines of the White House, and worse, the Situation Room, that is news because it reflects the abject incompetence and sloppiness in the administration, both of which endanger the country.

In that respect, Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” did the country a service in revealing the cavalier and unprofessional conduct inside the West Wing:

CHUCK TODD: Look I’m going to play — I want to play this tape but I’m curious, how is it — you recorded the Chief of Staff —

OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Absolutely.

CHUCK TODD: The White House Chief of Staff in the Situation Room —

OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Yes, yes.

…

CHUCK TODD: And you’re prepared in a moment’s notice to record him? Or were you planning to record him the minute you found out you had this meeting?

OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Well no, first of all, like I said I’m the only African American there. When you walk into a meeting with John Kelly who’s refused to meet with me the whole time he’s there, in the Situation Room, Chuck. We’re not going in there to talk about, you know, parking or scheduling issues.

…

CHUCK TODD: How often did you tape people?

OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Wait, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD: I know, how often did you tape people?

OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: As you’ll see in “Unhinged,” I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies. The president lies to the American people. Sarah Huckabee stands in front of the country and lies every single day. You have to have your own back because otherwise you’ll look back and you’ll see 17 knives in your back.

CHUCK TODD: Do you know how disloyal it looks, though, that you taped people —

OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: That’s not disloyalty.

Actually, it’s dangerous and reprehensible — and yet this White House invited her and scores of other irresponsible and unqualified people in and, apparently, no one picked up on the fact she was compromising security by taping top officials.  Now the White House needs to explains a whole bunch of things, starting with how she apparently managed to get a taping device into the Situation Room. (It’s fair to assume the White House has no idea what she taped and therefore is in the peculiar position of lacking access to basic information to assess which, if any, security rules she broke and whether legitimately classified material has been compromised.)

“The whole thing raises questions about this White House’s ability to handle security, and it highlights their dysfunctional personnel situation,” says former head of the Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub. “It’s weird that [John] Kelly would take her into a secure facility just to tell her he’s firing her. Given that she’s only known as a reality TV star, it’s also weird that they hired her in the first place.”

The Omarosa story reminds us of the illegitimate measures the White House takes  to silence employees. Attempting to muzzle employees and deny them their First Amendment rights as a condition of employment may be illegal; it is certainly illegitimate, yet another attempt to suppress facts and to treat employees of the taxpayers as Trump’s personal employees. These people work for us, the American people.

It would be a mistake to take Omarosa’s words (written or verbal) seriously. Indeed, this only trivializes the real concerns about the president’s fitness for office and the overall competence of the White House. Taking Omarosa’s accounts seriously in order to answer those inquiries would be foolish. She, however, did something that is news: surreptitiously tape high-level officials. The chaotic, unprofessional operation of the administration, hardly new but surely amplified by Omarosa, certainly is newsworthy. These are stories deserving of mainstream media coverage.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 Reign of terror?

[AmazonGrace]

Who to believe, a liar or a liar. 

Think I'm going with Cohen on this one. The chances that Trump would know an incriminating paper and deal with it accordingly are slim to none. And most papers you could conceal from view until people leave.

He may have tossed a candy and eaten the wrapper by mistake.

[AmazonGrace]

President of the United States: People who are smarter than me try to warn me but I'm a sucker for flattery 

 

[fraurosena]

He thinks she's wacky now. And he says she's under an NDA. I wonder if he'll sue?

 

[formergothardite]

If Omarosa recorded him there is no way other people didn't also do so. How many of his phone calls are recorded?