After making the rounds on some serious news shows over the past few days, Omarosa Manigault-Newman’s book tour took its next logical step Tuesday night with a stop at The Daily Show.
Trevor Noah scored the first late-night interview with the author of Unhinged since she started publicly flaming her former boss, President Donald Trump. “You are one of the first people who I would say has managed to out-Trump Trump,” the host began, prompting some awkward laughter from his guest.
If Noah didn’t know anything about the president, he said he would assume everything in Omarosa’s book is “wildly untrue,” but instead he said, “It doesn’t seem like there’s anything new in the book,” so “why write it?” On top of that, her credibility has been questioned by friends and foes alike.
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Omarosa seemed to take some offense at these suggestions. “They lie to the American people every single day,” she said of the Trump administration, “so it doesn’t surprise me that when they’re faced with the truth, they’ll push back.”
When Noah noted that she was part of that misinformation campaign, Omarosa said she “regrets” that and acknowledged that she was “totally complicit.” Yet at the same time, she maintained that the work she did in the administration did have a tangible impact on the lives of African-Americans.
“There were quite a few breaking points,” Omarosa said, when it came to Trump’s words and actions. “Every single time he said something, first I thought, ‘Is he doing this intentionally?’ And then when I realized that he was mentally impaired, that he was declining,” she added as the audience laughed and cheered. “It would be funny if it wasn’t true.” At that point, she said she wanted to find another African-American adviser to replace her, but as Kellyanne Conway reminded us this past weekend, that has not been the case.
Later, Noah brought up the recordings from within the White House that Omarosa has been releasing in conjunction with the book’s publication. Without those recordings, Noah admitted, “I wouldn’t have believed you, because I don’t think I believe many of the people that come out of the White House, because you don’t know what to believe when you’ve been gaslighted to the point where you don’t know what the truth is.”
Asked why she felt she needed to make the recordings, Omarosa said she had to be “careful” because of pending legal action being filed against her by the administration. “But as you said, this White House has a credibility issue,” she said. “I knew that I had to cover my back and document what I saw as an opportunity to blow the whistle on a lot of the corruption I saw going on in the White House.”
And yet despite the threats she has received from the administration, Omarosa exuded an air of confidence. “If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear,” she said ominously, making Noah chuckle.
Omarosa admitted that before she joined the administration, she had a “blind spot” when it came to Trump’s racism. Whereas she once called him “racial,” she now says he’s a “racist.” While he once “inspired” her to become a business success, she said, “Boy has he been a great disappointment.”
“I was blindly loyal,” she said. “And I look like the biggest dummy following this person, because I didn’t have that same perspective. And sometimes you have to step back in order to get a clear view. And I recognize that I was going down the wrong path with Trump.”
