US president praises
John Kelly for firing aide who has since released secret recordings
Donald Trump has escalated a bitter row with the former aide
Omarosa Manigault Newman, praising his chief of staff, John Kelly, for “quickly firing that dog”.
Manigault Newman, a former adviser to the US president and contestant on the reality television show The Apprentice, has released two secret recordings related to her firing as she promotes her memoir, Unhinged.
Her TV appearances – and her claim to have heard a tape of Trump using the N-word and other racial slurs during filming for The Apprentice – have aggravated the president, who levelled another barrage of attacks against her on Tuesday morning, by tweeting: “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the
White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
When Kelly fired Manigault Newman in December in the White House situation room, she secretly taped it, in an apparent breach of security protocol.
In the recording, which she played on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Kelly told Manigault Newman the firing was the result of “significant integrity issues” and that she could face damage to her reputation if she did not make it a “friendly departure”.
On Monday, Manigault Newman released another recording in which Trump appeared to express surprise that she had been fired.
“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.
In a later interview on Monday, Manigault Newman said she “absolutely” had more tapes in her possession and warned that there were more to come.
The controversy has raised questions about whether she could face legal repercussions for recording in the situation room.
Defending her actions, Manigault Newman said the recordings were necessary in a White House “where everybody lies”.
Trump’s scathing attack on Manigault Newman is the latest in a string of insults directed at prominent African American people. Earlier this month, Trump questioned the intelligence of the basketball star LeBron James, who had criticised the president in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon. Trump called Lemon the “dumbest man on television”.
Days earlier, Trump said the California congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat who is black, had a “very low IQ”.