If Omarosa Manigault Newman has one skill, it's the ability to force people to keep talking about her despite their better judgment. And with her recordings she secretly made during her time in the White House, and her teasing that there's one of Trump using the n-word on the set of The Apprentice, she's managed to keep public attention on her since she started promoting her new book.

On Monday, one of the original cast members from the dumb reality show we've lived in since Donald Trump started running for president came back for a cameo. Katrina Pierson was one of Trump's earliest cheerleaders--and the sort of person who wears necklaces made of bullets to own the libs--and on Monday she appeared on Fox News to defend him against the latest, completely unsurprising allegations of the president's racism. She denied that he never used the slur, saying flatly, "That didn't happen."

That's a much firmer stance than Trump's own press secretary was willing to take. When reporters pressed Sarah Huckabee Sanders on her claims that she never heard Trump say the word,she admitted that she hadn't asked him about it and then refused to guarantee that the American public would never hear a video of the president saying it.

But Pierson's certainty may have been premature. On Tuesday, Manigault Newman released a second recording of her, Pierson and Lynne Patton (an aide to Eric Trump at the time) discussing how to spin any potential leaks about Trump using the n-word. "I am trying to find at least what context it was used in to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it," Pierson can be heard saying. And at another point: "No, he said it. He is embarrassed by it."

Pierson pulled an about-face in record time, going on CNN to play defense. "Your viewers, I'm pretty sure, have run into an individual that is the complete epitome of annoying to where you absolutely have to finally give in in order to get on about your day," she said. "That happened a number of times because Omarosa is a bully."

Lynne Patton is also taking this track, saying on Twitter that the new recording just proves that Manigault Newman was obsessed with this suspected recording and wouldn't stop talking about. It also dovetails with Trump's latest round of attacks on his former aide, calling her volatile and irrational and claiming he only gave her a job because she begged for it. That's not usually what you want to hear about a president's hiring policies for White House jobs, but Trump must think that this helps him save face somehow.

It's almost quaint that Trump's spokespeople feel like they need to challenge the idea that Trump's racist, or that there's any backlash of substance that he'd face if recorded proof comes out. It's almost like they're still living in 2014, when there were actually things Republicans could say that would cost them an election. But we're in a new nightmare age now, where it's safe to say few people would earnestly be shocked to learn that a president who's repeatedly done and said racist shit in public would say racist shit in private.