“Yet another close adviser to President Trump has betrayed him,” announced Stephen Colbert at the top of The Late Show on Monday night.
Yes, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former reality-TV villain on The Apprentice who eventually served as a senior aide to President Trump, has become the latest confidant—following Billy Bush, Michael Cohen, and Stuttering John—to secretly record conversations with the man who’s not only proclaimed he “only hires the best people” but repeatedly hammered Hillary Clinton over her email security.
No one really knew what Omarosa was up to in the White House other than planning her big wedding, but apparently now they have their answer: She was recording private convos with the likes of Trump and chief of staff John Kelly so as to hawk a tell-all book, Unhinged, when she was inevitably fired from her West Wing gig.
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Omarosa told the co-hosts of Today that the “unhinged” person the book’s title refers to is none other than Donald J. Trump. And as Colbert explained, “Her most shocking allegation is that she had heard a tape of The Celebrity Apprentice where Donald Trump used the n-word.”
“After I closed the book, I had an opportunity to go out in Los Angeles and sit down with the person who actually has the copy of the tape, and I heard his voice, as clear as you and I are sitting here,” she said on Today. “It confirmed that he is truly a racist.” (Trump, for his part, has claimed that the tape doesn’t exist.)
Rumors of the so-called “Trump Tapes”—which allegedly feature Trump spewing racial epithets on The Apprentice—have persisted for quite some time. The Clinton campaign even searched far and wide for the tapes, alleged to be in the possession of show producer Mark Burnett, while Tom Arnold has a new show premiering Sept. 18 on Viceland called The Hunt for the Trump Tapes.
Sources connected to The Celebrity Apprentice previously told The Daily Beast that Trump repeatedly referred to the rapper Lil Jon as “Uncle Tom” on the show—Lil Jon later confirmed that this was indeed the case—and deaf actress Marlee Matlin as “retarded.”
As for Omarosa’s “revelation” that Trump is “truly a racist,” well, Colbert wasn’t all that surprised.
“This is huge. This is huge. Finally! We didn’t know,” joked Colbert. “Finally, we have proof that the guy who refused to rent to black tenants, said that a Nazi-Klan rally had some ‘fine people,’ and called Africa a ‘shithole’ is a racist.”
Trump has since sent a series of tweets calling Omarosa “wacky,” “a lowlife,” “not smart” and “a loser,” while pointing out that he “fired her” several times from The Apprentice.
“So, let me get this straight: she’s a loser who wouldn’t show up to work, but you kept her on because she said nice things. What’s the interview process like there?” asked Colbert. “Do you think the president is a big handsome boy? Oh, good. Here’s your key card and here are the launch codes.”
The media—and Trump team—have taken pains to dismiss Omarosa as an unhinged liar, a backstabber, and a self-promoter.
“Yes. She’s a liar and a backstabber with no credibility—exactly like everyone else in the Trump administration,” Colbert exclaimed. “So don’t roll your eyes. The press can’t have it both ways! They can’t report on it and roll their eyes at the same time, okay? She’s not below anyone else in the White House. She and General Kelly may have completely different pasts, but they have exactly the same future. You can never scrub off the Trump stank.”
