President Trump slams 'not smart' Omarosa
Trump lashes out at 'wacky' former adviser over her secret recordings, new book.
In a twist all-too-familiar for anyone who watched her villain persona on reality TV, Omarosa Manigault-Newman has turned – on her former mentor, her former colleagues and anyone else who crossed her during her brief time in politics.
The famously vindictive TV personality-turned-aide, in her forthcoming book due out Tuesday, aims to settle countless scores. She blasts President Trump as “moblike.” She depicts tensions inside the first family. She mocks her former campaign and White House co-workers.
And that's in addition to her accusations of racism against Trump that have featured heavily in her promotional interviews.
Fox News obtained an advance copy of the sensational tell-all, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.” In it, she details her long working relationship with the now-president, from her rise to fame on his show "The Apprentice" to her work on the campaign and later in the White House.
But, months after her firing, she has traded her praise of the administration for payback. And no blow is too low, including swipes at former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, who also served as press secretary for the Trump campaign.
In the book, Manigault-Newman accuses Hicks of lacking “the understanding of politics for the job she was given.”
“She was always Googling terms while we were in meetings, always playing catch-up, always sensitive about what she didn’t know,” Manigault-Newman writes. “She was so painfully aware of her inadequacies, she refused to speak publicly about the campaign or as a surrogate to express the candidate’s views.”
Manigault-Newman also accuses Trump, whom she calls her “mentor” throughout the book, of expecting “moblike” loyalty, likening him to a “cult leader.”
“Loyalty is a loaded topic when it comes to Donald Trump. His moblike loyalty requirements are exacting, imperishable, and sometimes unethical (as in James Comey’s case.),” she writes. “But for the people in Trumpworld, loyalty to him is an absolute and unyielding necessity, akin to followers’ devotion to a cult leader.”
She alleges: “Trumpworld is a cult of personality focused solely on Donald J. Trump.”
At one point, she deploys a Trumpian nickname for the president: "Twitter Fingers."
But Trump has deployed his own for the author, dubbing her "Wacky Omarosa" on Monday as she hits the interview circuit, as his aides come out in force to decry her conduct.
Drawing pointed condemnation from the West Wing was her decision to release tapes of secretly recorded conversations, including with Trump himself.
That recording was released Monday on NBC’s “Today,” purporting to capture a conversation between Manigault-Newman and Trump after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly in December. In the tape, Trump claims he didn’t know about her firing in advance.
Over the weekend, Manigault-Newman released a different recording, of that conversation with Kelly in the Situation Room.
White House officials blasted her for making both recordings.
“The thought of doing something like that to a fellow employee, not to mention the leader of the free world, is completely disgraceful,” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told "Fox & Friends."
And on Monday, Trump tweeted that, “People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart.”
Her firing is a key section of the new book. In it, she goes so far as to claim that Kelly and the White House lawyers present, upon notifying her of her termination, were holding her against her will in the Situation Room, suggesting she was at risk of an asthma attack because she initially couldn't get her inhaler.
“I am an asthma sufferer, and I began to feel a tightness in my chest. I had to calm myself down or I could have had a full-blown asthma attack,” Manigault-Newman writes in the prologue. “I asked if I could go get my purse where I had stashed my inhaler, and they wouldn’t let me leave the room. I asked why I was not allowed to leave, and they said this is how Kelly had set up the meeting.”
Manigault-Newman’s assistant was ultimately allowed to “go get [her] purse” with the inhaler.
“My asthma is triggered by stressful situations, and this was definitely one. I asked again if I was allowed to leave the room or speak to my husband, and they refused,” she wrote. “I was being held against my will in a secure room guarded by men with guns.”
Manigault-Newman also writes in the book that she believed her firing was related to her knowledge of a tape made in the early 2000s, in which Trump supposedly uses “the N-word.”
That claim has been the subject of intense dispute, as she says in the book that the tape exists but she hadn't heard it. Yet on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, she said she has since heard it
Monday evening, Trump tweeted that "The Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett had assured him that no such tape existed of him using "such a terrible and disgusting word."
"I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have," Trump wrote. "She made it up."
The president then claimed that "Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didn’t want interviews) when she worked in the White House. Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!"
The former White House aide makes a slew of other accusations in her book, sure to be chewed over for days by the president's allies and detractors alike.
In other sections, she gets deeply personal about the first family. She says that daughter Tiffany Trump was “treated like a California castoff,” and that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, was “desperate to please his father.”
“Don Jr. has been struggling against the negative expectation of his namesake since the moment he was born,” Manigault-Newman writes, going on to state that candidate-Trump did not attend his eldest son’s convention speech, but instead watched Eric’s.
“He beamed with pride at his second son,” she writes. “When Donald sat there to watch Eric, I felt sorry for Don Jr.”
She later quotes Trump as calling Trump Jr. “a f---up” over his comment likening Syrian refugees to “a bowl of Skittles.”
Manigault-Newman lobs a slew of other shots at the first family, including claiming first lady Melania Trump wants a divorce when he's out of office.
Plus she writes that, "Our president is mentally and physically impaired."
The White House on Friday responded to early leaks of the book's contents with a blanket statement decrying it. "Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.
Manigault-Newman also blasts former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, now on trial, as a “liability,” and former Trump campaign chief strategist Steve Bannon as an “alarming” choice, slamming him as a “sexist and racist.”
And as for Russia, Manigault-Newman claims that Trump “lacked basic comprehension about the very complicated relationship” between the U.S. and Russia.
“He was fixated on Vladimir Putin as a feared, respected, and admired leader,” she writes. “I believe he was envious of the control that Putin exerts over his people.”
In another skirmish, Trump tweeted Monday that Manigault-Newman signed a non-disclosure agreement upon her exit from the White House. But the former White House aide writes in her book that she “refused” to sign an NDA.
Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report.
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