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Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman continued her scorched earth book/vengeance tour on Monday with a stunning audio clip that appears to highlight just how ignorant President Donald Trump is about what actually goes on in his own White House.




The tape, which she claims came just one day after she was ignominiously fired from her administration job by Chief of Staff John Kelly, features a befuddled-sounding Trump seemingly shocked that he’d lost one of his hand-picked lieutenants.


“What’s going on?” Trump asks Omarosa. “I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?”

After Omarosa explains that Kelly told her that “you guys” had asked her to go, Trump responds “No...I, I..Nobody even told me about it.”

Hmmmmm.

“You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it,” Trump continues. “Goddamnit, I don’t love you leaving at all.”


While it’s conceivable that Trump probably doesn’t know about every hiring and firing made under his name at the White House, we’re not talking about some junior staffer here. Omarosa had been one of the president’s chief surrogates throughout the campaign, and was given a top-tier administration position based entirely on her personal relationship with Trump. So, either Trump is lying to her face (entirely possible!) or he’s genuinely clueless about what actually goes on in his own house (also entirely possible!).

Either way, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pushed back hard against th is latest taped revelation on Monday morning, telling Fox & Friends that his reaction “sounds perfectly natural” since “most of the things about her never came to him.”


Who would have thought that a reality show goon hiring another reality show goon to play a high-level role in his reality show administration would end up in the sort of spectacular implosion usually reserved for, well, reality shows? Shocking, really.

Update, 9:50 a.m.: President Trump has responded.