Sanders ‘can’t guarantee’ Americans will never hear Trump use racial slur

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Tuesday she had not heard President Donald Trump utter a racial slur, although she could not guarantee that Trump never used a derogatory term for African-Americans.

Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former presidential adviser, is accusing Trump of using the N-word before he was elected. In her new memoir about her time in the White House, Manigault Newman claims there is a recording of Trump using the slur during a taping of his reality television show “The Apprentice.”


Sanders was pressed by reporters on the accusation during a White House press briefing on Tuesday afternoon. Although she called Manigault Newman’s allegations “salacious” and “ridiculous,” Sanders did not guarantee that Americans would never hear Trump saying the N-word.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” Sanders said. “I can tell you that I’ve never heard it.”

Sanders said she had not asked Trump directly whether he had used the racial slur. “I didn‘t have to because he addressed it to the American people all at one time,“ Sanders said, referring to Trump’s denial on Twitter the night before.

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Earlier in the day, Manigault Newman released the latest tape she secretly recorded during her time working under Trump. She says the tape shows campaign staffers discussing how to spin Trump’s use of a racial slur. Both staffers who were taped, Katrina Pierson and Lynn Patton, deny the existence of such a tape. Rumors about the alleged “N-word tape” first circulated during the 2016 campaign.

Trump quickly fired back on Twitter after the tape aired Tuesday morning, calling Manigault Newman a “dog.“ Reporters repeatedly questioned Sanders on that characterization, asking whether the comment had racial undertones.

“Look, the president has said this has absolutely nothing to do with race and everything to do with the president calling out someone‘s lack of integrity,“ Sanders said. “He has made a number of comments about plenty of people, and to try to single that out to one group is frankly silly because I think if you did a comparison, he‘s probably got a lot more nasty things out there about some other people.“

Sanders was also asked whether she thought the insults Trump slung at Manigault Newman on Tuesday were appropriate.

“The president is somebody who is always going to fight fire with fire,“ Sanders said.