Omarosa Manigault Newman’s book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, is now officially on sale to the public. And like her aptly titled book, her former boss has spent the last few days reminding everyone that he is unhinged, unfit for office, and poses a grave danger to the American people, our democracy and the rest of the world. This all began over the weekend after Omarosa began making the rounds on different television shows to promote her new book. Accompanying the book are a series of taped conversations that she secretly recorded both during and after her time at the White House. Omarosa also alleges that there is a tape somewhere out in the universe from their time together on The Apprentice, in which Donald Trump uses the n-word to describe a contestant on the show.
Between the two of them, there’s zero credibility. In fact, it’s hard to decide which one of them is the meanest, the biggest liar, or the worst kind of opportunist. But Omarosa is no dummy. She knows how to play the game, how to keep people talking about her and, while she can’t be counted on to tell the truth, in this case, she has the receipts to back up her claims. She’s not only taking a page out of Trump’s playbook—right now, she’s actually acting more Trumpian than Trump himself.
This is likely why he’s so obsessed with her. He has spent the last few days rage tweeting about her. And while he often spends his days defending himself on Twitter instead of working, this time is different. This is because Omarosa scares him. Now, we all know that Trump regularly attacks people of color and women and is scared of those with power. In this way, Omarosa is no exception. But the kind of fury he’s unleashing right now is a special one that is both sexist and racist in nature. It is classic misogynoir (the specific type of misogyny directed at black women). And it’s not new for Trump. He’s attacked several other high-profile black women over the last year, most notably Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and ESPN anchor Jemele Hill.
This morning, Trump tweeted out this about Omarosa:
According to Axios, former and current senior officials in the White House were “scared shitless” of Omarosa. Among the things they cited were her imposing physical presence, the fact that she seemed to not answer to anyone, and her routine access to Trump. It goes without saying that Omarosa is not a nice person. It’s hard to defend anything about her and working with her is probably a torturous, horrific experience. But there is a racist and gendered overtone in this case that has to be addressed. While we can concede that she is an awful human being, she is also, in fact, a human being. And she is being described here in the most pervasive of racist stereotypes used to disparage black women—physically intimidating, domineering, out of control, sassy, and on and on. Note that these were also the same ways that the right often described Michelle Obama. And yet, even though we know that Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders are also women working in the White House who are liars, are demanding, domineering, and have lots of access to Trump, they are never described in these ways.
This is so obvious that even Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton tweeted out that there are racial and sexist overtones to Trump’s words:
In the past few days, Trump has used the following words to describe Omarosa: “wacky,” “crazed,” “deranged,” “lowlife,” and now “dog.” It doesn’t take a lot to know that Trump really wanted to call her another word for a female dog that he didn’t think he could get away with saying on Twitter. But he needn’t have said it to let us know what he is thinking. And given his very long, well documented history of racism, it’s also not a stretch to imagine that Trump is doing everything he can to restrain himself from publicly calling her a “black b*tch,” though it’s most certainly what he is calling her in private. Because that’s who he is. That is who he’s always been. This is the man that America has as its leader until another election or until he’s removed from office.
We already knew this man should have never been allowed to hold the office of the president. But now we also know that we don’t need a tape with him using the n-word to confirm that he’s a racist. He’s been showing us that for years. We also don’t need Omarosa’s tapes or books to demonstrate that he’s a bigot and a misogynist. That’s also crystal clear. But what we do know is that he’ll never stop these kinds of vile, disgusting attacks and he’ll continue to degrade America and our democracy right alongside him.