Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman claims in her book, which was released Tuesday, that aides to Vice President Pence kept “slipping up” and referring to Pence as “president.”
She also suggests that the vice president is just “biding his time” until President Trump leaves office.
In passages of “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” Manigault Newman writes that Pence’s staff would joke in private that Pence would eventually be in the Oval Office.
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“Jokingly, in private, I heard people say things like, ‘When we’re in charge …’ or ‘Once you become president …’,” Manigault Newman writes. “The first thing I noticed was that people on his staff kept slipping up and calling him president — accidentally sometimes.”
She added that she once confronted Pence, questioning if he had political ambitions following a possible Trump second term.
“Pence said, ‘Two terms? You think two terms? That’s good, I like the way you think, Omarosa. I’m here to serve the president. I’m only loyal to the president,’ ” she writes.
“Several months later, conservative columnist George Will would call Pence a ‘sycophant poodle,’ ” she continues. “I suspected that Pence was just biding his time, looking the part of the perfect VP, until Trump resigned, was impeached, or served his term.”
Pence’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the book passages.
Manigault Newman has already publicly contradicted one claim made in her tell-all book, saying in an interview Friday that she had personally heard a recording of Trump using the “N-word” during a taping of “The Apprentice.”
In her book, however, Manigault Newman writes that she had merely heard an account of the recording from a friend.
She released a tape on Tuesday that appears to show several other aides discussing the alleged tape on where Trump used the n-word.
In the recording obtained by CBS News, Manigault Newman and other aides appear to discuss how to handle fallout from the tape, allegedly from Trump’s time as host of “The Apprentice,” if it were released.
Trump himself issued a fiery statement upon the book’s release Tuesday morning, calling his former adviser and “The Apprentice” star “a crazed, crying lowlife” and a “dog.”
“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” he wrote on Twitter.