Donald Trump has hit back at his former aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman, after she released tapes of secretly recorded White House conversations, including one in which the president appeared to express surprise that she had been fired from his administration.
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will,” Trump tweeted on Monday, admitting that his response to her claims were “not presidential”.
“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....”
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Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice reality TV star who became the most prominent African American in the Trump White House, has been promoting her new book Unhinged, which offers a scathing account of life in the West Wing.
On Monday, Manigault Newman released an apparent recording of an interaction with Trump in 2017 after she was dismissed from the White House.
“Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?” Trump says on the tape played on NBC’s Today show on Monday.
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) While I know it’s “not presidential” to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, 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!
The audio follows other recordings released on Sunday, which she claimed she made when the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, called her into the Situation Room to fire her.
The recordings, if established to be genuine, could be treated as a breach of White House security.
“General Kelly – General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave,” Manigault Newman says on the tape released on Monday.
“No … I, I, nobody even told me about it,” the president appears to respond.
In her book, which is published this week, Manigault Newman paints a picture of Trump as a president who is kept out of the loop on administration decisions.
She told NBC’s Today show there were “multiple tapes” and warned that there were more to come.
“There’s a lot of very corrupt things happening in the White House and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of them,” she said.
On Monday, Trump also responded to the author’s claim that after she was fired from the White House, the Trump campaign made her a $15,000 per month job that was, in reality, an attempt to buy her silence with an expansive non-disclosure agreement. “Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!” Trump tweeted.
The key Trump revelations in Omarosa Manigault Newman's new book Read more
A White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, declined to get into specifics of Manigault Newman’s firing but emphasised that “the president makes the decisions”.
But he added: “For her to go out and praise the president lavishly after she left her post and tell the truth about how much work he’s done for the African American community and who he is as a person, I guess that wasn’t paying the bills.”
The new recording intensifies a developing controversy over the author’s apparent practice of secretly taping her colleagues, a day after she released a recording of Kelly firing her in the high-security Situation Room, where the president and senior government officials meet to discuss serious foreign policy issues.
The room, located in the basement of the West Wing, is designated a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, and staff are not permitted to bring in cellphones or recording devices.
“The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said on Sunday.
The question of whether Manigault Newman could face prosecution for making the recordings in the Situation Room, or recording the president without his knowledge, has yet to be clarified.
Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Monday: “She was certainly violating national security regulations, which I think have the force of law.”
Manigault Newman claimed on Sunday that she had heard a recording of Trump using the N-word and other racial epithets during taping of his reality TV show The Apprentice. She declined to say who had played her the recording.
Manigault Newman, who was once one of Trump’s most prominent defenders, said “hindsight” had changed her views of the president. “Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities,” she said.
Who is Omarosa, the former Trump aide turned leading detractor? Read more
Many have questioned Manigault Newman’s claims, however. Frank Luntz, the campaign pollster who she claimed told an associate he had heard the president utter the racial slur, has emphatically denied the assertion.
“I’m in @Omarosa’s book on page 149. She claims to have heard from someone who heard from me that I heard Trump use the N-word. Not only is this flat-out false (I’ve never heard such a thing), but Omarosa didn’t even make an effort to call or email me to verify. Very shoddy work,” Luntz tweeted.
In another claim, Manigault Newman said she had seen the president eat a note handed to him in the Oval Office by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to prevent presidential archivists getting it.
Cohen swiftly rubbished her recollection on Twitter.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Trump with Ms Manigault Newman at a church service during the 2016 US presidential campaign
A former adviser to Donald Trump has released what she says is a tape of a phone call from the US president after her dismissal last year.
In the tape played on US TV channel NBC, a voice presumed to be Mr Trump's expresses surprise at Omarosa Manigault Newman being fired the previous day.
"Nobody even told me about it," the male voice can be heard saying.
She is releasing a memoir soon and the White House have described her as a disgruntled ex-employee.
Tweeting on Monday, Mr Trump said his former employee had only started to attack him after she lost her job.
He added that he had asked his Chief of Staff John Kelly to try to "work it out".
Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump 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.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018 Report
Skip Twitter post 2 by @realDonaldTrump ...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! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018 Report
President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says she may have broken the law by recording private conversations at the White House.
Ms Manigault Newman knew the president from her days as a star of The Apprentice reality TV show, and advised him on African-American issues during the 2016 election before taking a communications role in the White House.
Floating in and out
By Tara McKelvey, BBC White House reporter
"Wacky Omarosa" the president calls her. He has a point: her disclosures are hugely entertaining - and embarrassing for the president.
Through her book and TV appearances, she's exposed private conversations and the inner workings of an unconventional administration, but she hasn't exposed any serious wrongdoing, and it's unlikely she will.
She worked in the office of public liaison, focusing on outreach to the African-American community, and didn't have access to top-level secrets.
I'd often see her float in and out of White House events, leaving them early if they got boring, or showing her friends around the place and inviting them to the White House mess for coffee.
Her revelations are now creating a stir for a reality-TV-star-studded West Wing but this episode's likely to end soon.
What does the 'Trump tape' say?
In the excerpt broadcast, the voice said to be the president's tells Ms Manigault Newman he has seen on the news that she is "thinking of leaving" and asks, "What's going on?"
"General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave," she replies.
"No... Nobody even told me about it," the voice replies. "You know they run a big operation but I didn't know it. I didn't know that. Damn it. I don't love you leaving at all."
Why did Manigault Newman lose her job?
Her dismissal was announced on 13 December amid US media reports that she had annoyed colleagues.
In a recording she released of her dismissal, the man assumed to be Mr Kelly speaks of "significant integrity issues" as the reason for firing her, mentioning her use of government vehicles.
"There are some serious legal issues that have been violated and you're open to some legal action that we hope, we think, we can control," he says at one point.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption John Kelly: 'I was not brought in to control Trump'
He also says: "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 and then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation."
When Ms Manigault Newman asks if President Trump is aware of what is happening, he brushes the question aside, saying, "Let's not go down the road. This is non-negotiable discussion."
Defending publishing the conversations, she said she had "protected" herself "because this is a White House where everybody lies".
Mr Trump tweeted that she had signed a non-disclosure agreement, which presumably was meant to prevent her from revealing what had gone on at work.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Non-disclosure agreements have been in the news a lot - but what exactly are they?
Non-disclosure agreements were presented to senior White House staff in April of last year, the New York Times reports, but no penalties were specified for breaking them.
Ethics lawyer Norm Eisen, who served under former President Barack Obama, suggested to the paper such agreements might be a civil rights violation.
What does her book say?
The most explosive allegation in Unhinged is that there is a tape of Mr Trump using the N-word during filming for The Apprentice.
In the book, she does not say she heard him use the word, or that she heard the tape, but in an interview for NPR radio on Sunday, she said she had actually heard the recording. "I heard the tape," she said.
The White House has said her claims about his language are false.
The book indicates that her view on President Trump has also changed.
She now says the president is a racist, contradicting what she said when she was fired.
Omarosa Manigault Newman‘s interview on Today got heated, Monday, as Savannah Guthrie grilled the former aide to the president about her time in Donald Trump‘s White House.
Manigault Newman — who was on the morning show to promote her new book, Unhinged — claimed at one point during the sit-down that Guthrie, 46, was asking questions too quickly.
Guthrie started, “Do you think the president lies often?” to which Manigault Newman replied, “Oh absolutely, in fact —”
Before the 44-year-old could respond, Guthrie questioned, “How long have you known that?” Manigault Newman began, “There was a report that said that he lied almost 4,000 lies in the last — ” before Guthrie pressed again, “Have you known that he is a liar as you say?”
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Manigault Newman answered, “Well, absolutely.”
Asked Guthrie, “Why did you work for him?” Manigault Newman retorted, “Savannah, slow down. I’m gonna
your question. Don’t worry, I’m here. I’ve got all the time you need. You don’t have to ask 10 questions in one second. It’s okay.”
“First of all, he is known to be an entertainer, to exaggerate,” Manigault Newman continued. “I never expected him to lie to the country. I thought that he would take his oath of office seriously, that he would be committed to advancing this country. But instead, as I stated, there was a report that said he has said something like 4,000 lies since he’s taken office. So he absolutely has an issue with the truth, and sometimes he battles with reality.”
“There’s a lot of very corrupt things that are happening in the White House, and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of this.” Watch @OMAROSA’s full interview with @savannahguthrie pic.twitter.com/9R2nnDXnIy — TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 13, 2018
Later in the interview, Manigault Newman discussed her claim that a tape exists of Trump saying the N-word on The Apprentice, the former reality series that she once appeared on.
Manigault Newman, who said that Trump is recorded on three minutes of audio saying the word, commented, “He was talking about some African Americans in the production during the course of The Apprentice, which is unacceptable. Here’s the thing. Why don’t we ask Donald Trump a simple question — ‘Donald J. Trump, have you ever used the N-word?’ — and allow him to respond? Because the people who have this tape intend to release this tape.”
RELATED: Omarosa Manigault Newman Releases Alleged Secret Recording of Her Firing from White House
Manigault Today Show
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Guthrie asked Manigault Newman why she denied that Trump is racist the day after she was fired in February.
“I had just been threatened by General [John] Kelly who said that things could get ugly for me, that there would be damage to my reputation. So I was being very careful,” said Manigault Newman, who just released an alleged secret recording of Kelly, the Chief of Staff, firing her. “I was very concerned about my well-being, about what these powerful people would do to me after they threatened me.”
RELATED VIDEO: Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie Open Up About Balancing Family with Today
Manigault Newman released another allegedly secret recording through the show on Monday, this one featuring a conversation that she had with the president after her firing.
In the audio tape, President Trump seemed shocked to hear that Kelly had asked Manigault Newman to leave, stating, “Nobody even told me about it.”
#Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. pic.twitter.com/OJe47RdcDC — TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 13, 2018
Prodded by Guthrie to reveal how she was able to secretly record conversations — specifically the one with Kelly, allegedly taped in the secure Situation Room — Manigault Newman stated, “I’ll just leave that to your imagination.”
Manigault Newman said she wasn’t concerned about legal repercussions for recording the conversations, claiming to Today, “I have protections. The moment I decided to blow the whistle on a lot of the corruption going on in the White House, there are protections that are afforded to me.”
Asked about Manigault Newman’s book on Saturday, the president simply called her a “lowlife,” according to a White House pool report.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also issued a statement saying that Unhinged “is riddled with lies and false accusations,” adding that “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.”
