President Trump on Monday blasted former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman after she went on a media tour to promote her new book that calls the president a racist and an incompetent leader.
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will,” Trump tweeted, referring to her appearances on his old reality television program.
{mosads}In a series of tweets, Trump sought to explain why he hired someone whom he dubbed a “lowlife” to a senior position in the White House and the reasons for her dismissal last winter.
“She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok,” the president wrote.
The latest barbs from Trump escalated the conflict with Manigault Newman, which has virtually consumed the White House for the past several days.
“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!” Trump wrote in a separate tweet.
The tweets came just hours after Manigault Newman released a tape that appeared to be a recording of a phone conversation with the president, during which he seemed surprised about her firing.
“No,” Trump said when Manigault Newman told him White House chief of staff John Kelly had fired her. “Nobody even told me about it. You know, they run a big operation but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. Goddamn it.”
“I don’t love you leaving at all,” he added.
Trump pushed back against the notion that he was out of the loop on her firing, writing in a second tweet that he initially instructed Kelly to keep her on board but that the situation eventually deteriorated.
“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!” he wrote.
Trump suggested that her dismissal was in large part related to her standing with the staff.
“People in the White House hated her” in part because “she was vicious, but not smart” and “nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work,” Trump tweeted.
The president also claimed that he “would rarely see her,” despite claims from Manigault Newman and other White House officials that the two frequently had contact.
Manigault Newman responded to Trump’s tweets on MSNBC, saying, “I think it’s sad that with all the things that’s going on in the country that he would take time out to insult me and to insult my intelligence. This is his pattern with African-Americans.”
Trump later suggested Manigault Newman should not be speaking out.
“Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!” he tweeted.
It is not clear whether Trump was referring to an agreement related to her government service. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday on ABC that “we have confidentiality agreements in the West Wing.”
The White House did not respond when asked if Manigault Newman signed such an agreement.
The war of words between Trump and Manigault Newman is intensifying days ahead of the release of her memoir, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.”
The book contains a number of explosive claims, including that there are tapes of Trump saying the N-word on the set of his former reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice.”
The White House and its allies have mounted a fierce public-relations campaign to rebut the book’s claims and undermine Manigault Newman’s credibility.
When the first excerpts from the book were released last Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement saying the book is “riddled with lies and false accusations.”
The Republican National Committee has sent multiple email blasts to reporters after Manigault Newman’s media appearances, one of which calls her a “terrible liar.”
Updated at 4:33 p.m.