Reality TV star and ex-Trump White House official Omarosa
Let’s first stipulate that things are strange when the discussion of the White House involves one reality TV show contestant talking about a reality TV show host. Nevertheless, that is the world we now live, where Donald Trump hired Omarosa Manigault-Newman to work in the White House Communications department, and then fired her one year later. Post-firing, Omarosa (now famous enough for first name only), known as a reality TV “villain” from Trump’s “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice” shows as well as other TV programs, quickly landed on the new season of CBS reality TV show “Celebrity Big Brother.” There, she has already made waves for her ominous comments about Donald Trump. While many people dismiss Omarosa as just a media attention “whore,” she has twice been in a unique position to judge Trump, thus her comments about the danger of Trump’s presidency are relevant.
What a teary-eyed Omarosa said about Trump was captured on tape during her conversation with Ross Matthews on “Celebrity Big Brother.” Here is the tweet distributed by the show’s producers on February 8, containing this conversation:
.@Omarosa opens up to @helloross about her time in the White House on tonight's Celebrity Big Brother. In the meantime, don't miss a minute of the action on the #BBLF: https://t.co/H9nnS6VGdW pic.twitter.com/8x6dFBZxD2
— Big Brother (@CBSBigBrother) February 8, 2018
The transcript is as follows:
Matthews: … and, from the outside, can I tell you as a voter, a citizen, I never got it, why you went to the White House with him.
Omarosa: I felt like, it was like a call to duty, I felt like I was serving my country, not serving him. Never was it about accepting a political appointment, it was always about the country. Like, I was haunted by tweets every single day, like what is he going to tweet next?
Matthews: Does anybody say to him, “what are you doing?”
Omarosa: I mean, I tried to be that person, and then all of the people around him attacked me. It was like, “keep her away from him, don’t give her access, don’t let her talk to him,” and it’s like, Ivanka’s there, Jared’s there. And it’s ….
Matthews: Who has the power to say, “what’s going on?”
Omarosa: I don’t know. I’m not there, it’s not my, not my circus, not my monkeys, you know, I’d like to say, “not my problem,” but I can’t say that, because, like, it’s bad.
Matthews: Should we be worried?
Omarosa: [Nods her head yes].
Matthews: Uggh. Don’t say that. Ohh. ‘Cause we are worried, but I need you to say, “no, it’s going to be okay.”
Omarosa: Okay, no it’s gonna not be okay. It’s not.
Matthews: [Big sigh].
Omarosa: So bad.
Now, we should always take what people say with a grain of salt when they know the TV cameras are rolling. And we should assume that Omarosa is being as self-serving as possible, likely inflating the importance of her White House role. Nevertheless, she did work for the Trump White House for a year. If anyone else left the Trump White House and said they were worried about Trump’s tweets, that the place is a “circus,” that “it’s bad” and “it’s not going to be okay,” would we doubt them? Indeed, given what we’ve heard from other sources about the Trump White House, such as Michael Wolff‘s new book “Fire and Fury,” is there any evidence to dispute what Omarosa said to Matthews? Finally, it’s fair to say that Omarosa was a big fan of Trump, given that he essentially made her TV career and even gave her a White House job. So, strangely, she might be more credible as to her impressions than someone who is a hard-core Trump hater from the get-go.
In short, there’s plenty for which to criticize both Omarosa and the merging of politics and reality TV entertainment. Nevertheless, Omarosa’s comments about Donald Trump may be a case of the broken clock being right twice a day.
Photo by DrivingtheNortheast, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/KEayAP
