Former Trump White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman praised Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-Calif.) 2020 campaign as “important” and “historic” during an interview published Thursday.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Kamala Harris and how important and how historic her race is,” Manigault Newman told BuzzFeed in the interview, noting that her praise of the California lawmaker did not necessarily mean she would be voting for her.
{mosads}”In the spirit of Shirley Chisholm, I think it’s important that we look at the only African American woman that’s in the race and how important black women are, to how important they were to the last election and how important they will be to this election.”
Manigault Newman, who was fired from her White House position as communications director for the Office of Public Liaison in December 2017, has been critical of President Trump since leaving his team.
She told BuzzFeed that in the 2020 election she will be an independent voter, and has yet to make her mind up on a candidate.
Manigault Newman also asserted to the outlet that how Trump campaigned in 2016 against Ben Carson, now the Housing and Urban Development secretary, shows how he would campaign against a black candidate in the general election.
“When Ben Carson was leading in the polls over Donald Trump, his first attack was that was Ben Carson was crazy, and started to attack him mentally, and then he started to assail his character,” Manigault Newman said. “I think that you’ll see much of the same from Donald Trump that he will start to attack things that generally aren’t political.”
“[The attacks] will be very, very personal and will have an undertone of the -isms, whether it’s sexism, or racism, or misogyny,” she added. “You’ll see a lot of those same kind of themes in Donald Trump’s race if he goes head-to-head against an African American candidate.”