President Trump opposed putting former slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman reportedly claims in her new book.
Manigault Newman writes in “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House” that she approached Trump about putting Tubman on the bill after Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said he wasn’t focused on doing so, Business Insider reported Tuesday.
“You want me to put that face on the twenty-dollar bill?” Trump is said to have replied, according to Business Insider.
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Manigault Newman wrote in the book that she was offended with the reaction, with the aide calling Tubman “the woman who personally brought more than three hundred slaves to freedom, risking her own life every time,” according to Business Insider.
In a letter to Congress released in June, the Treasury Department did not commit to putting Tubman on the $20 bill, which was originally a plan of President Obama’s administration.
Trump said in a 2016 TV interview that he thought “Harriet Tubman is fantastic,” but suggested putting her in a $2 bill or some other denomination, calling the move to put Tubman in the $20 billion “pure political correctness,” according to Business Insider.
Trump’s reported opposition to putting Tubman on the $20 bill is the latest of many claims made in “Unhinged” to surface in the media.
Trump and Manigault Newman have been trading attacks since late last week, when excerpts from her book began to be published in the media. Trump took to Twitter on Monday to call Manigault Newman a “lowlife,” while calling her a “dog” on Tuesday.