US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has hit back at claims by his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman that she has heard a recording of him using the N-word.
The pair have traded barbs in a messy clash over Manigault Newman’s explosive tell-all book about her time working for Trump.
On Monday, Trump tweeted that he had received a call from the producer of The Apprentice, the reality show on which it’s claimed he was recorded using the racial slur off air.
In the tweet, he said that he was assured “there are NO TAPES [his capitals] of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa.”
Trump insisted, “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have.”
He also said that Manigault Newman had called him “a true Champion of Civil Rights” until she was fired.
This morning, the US president continued his tirade against his former aide, calling her a “crazed, crying lowlife” and a “dog”.
Sensitive issues
Manigault Newman, the former White House liaison to black voters, claimed in her new memoir that she’d heard such tapes existed, and on Sunday said that she had listened to one after the book’s publication.
Earlier on Monday, Trump had accused Manigault Newman as being “wacky” and “not smart” after his former co-star on the show revealed her recording of a phone conversation with the president.
Beyond their war of words, the row touches on several sensitive issues in Trump’s White House.
It references a lack of racial diversity among senior officials, security in the executive mansion, a culture that some there feel borders on paranoia, and the extraordinary measures used to keep ex-employees quiet.
In an unusual admission, Trump acknowledged that the public sparring was perhaps beneath a person in his position, tweeting that he knew it was “not presidential” to take on “a lowlife like Omarosa.”
But he added: “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!”
The dispute has been building for days as Manigault Newman promotes her memoir “Unhinged,” which is published today.
The book paints a damning picture of Trump, including Manigault Newman’s claim that he used racial slurs on the set of The Apprentice.
In a series of interviews on NBC, Manigault Newman also revealed two audio recordings from her time at the White House, including portions of a recording of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly, which she says occurred in the high-security Situation Room, and a phone call with Trump after she was fired.
Surprised
Manigault Newman says she has more recordings.
Asked on MSNBC’s Hardball if special counsel Robert Mueller — investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia — would be interested in any of them, she said, “if his office calls again, anything they want, I’ll share”.
Trump officials and a number of outside critics denounced the recordings as a serious breach of ethics and security, and White House aides worried about what else Manigault Newman may have captured in the West Wing.
The latest tape recording appears to show Trump expressing surprise about her firing, saying “nobody even told me about it”.
But Manigault Newman said he “probably instructed General Kelly to do it”.
On Twitter yesterday, Trump declared that she had been “fired for the last time,” a reference to her appearances on his reality TV show.
He said Kelly had called her a “loser & nothing but problems,” but claimed that he himself had tried to save her job because he liked her public comments about him.
“I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me – until she got fired!” Trump tweeted.
Responding on NBC, Manigault Newman said, “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.”
She added: “This is his pattern with African-Americans.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say