Omarosa’s bold claim of breaching the Situation Room

Mission accomplished! Trump has unloaded on Manigault-Newman in his public comments since Saturday:

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

...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

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! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

Contrary to Trump’s claim, the press isn’t making much effort to make Manigault-Newman seem legitimate. In interviews, she has faced tough questions about her past statements in defense of Trump and how she could have missed his racist rhetoric before. (In an interview shortly after her firing, she said he was “racial, but he is not a racist,” a brutal act of torture against the English language.) Many of the claims in her book have been met with deserved skepticism. The press has also expressed horror that she apparently surreptitiously recorded her own firing in the White House Situation Room, as my colleague Vernon Loeb reported.

The most damning knock on Trump is not that he fired Manigault-Newman. It’s that he hired her in the first place. On The Apprentice, Manigault-Newman’s role was that of the scheming, duplicitous villain. Years ago, he told the journalist Tim O’Brien, “We didn’t know she was the Wicked Witch until the audience found she was the Wicked Witch.” As the president himself tweeted, he fired her three times. Meanwhile, a tape that Manigault-Newman played on Meet the Press, allegedly of the president, captured him expressing sadness about her December ouster.

The president has no reason to be surprised that she was as prone to drama in his White House as she had been in the Apprentice boardroom. Trump seemed to have had two reasons to add her to his administration, despite ample forewarnings. One was that, as he pointed out in his tweet, she was willing to praise him bombastically. The other was that she’s African American. Trump had been accused of racist rhetoric throughout the campaign; at the very least, his outreach to black voters had been awkward, as when he asked them, “What do you have to lose?” by supporting him. It’s no surprise that Kellyanne Conway, asked to name a high-profile black adviser to the president since Manigault-Newman’s departure, could not.