Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House

by Omarosa Manigault Newman

This White House has a problem with the truth. But at least they are consistent—and only too predictable—with the lies they tell.

Loyalty is a loaded topic when it comes to Donald Trump. His moblike loyalty requirements are exacting, imperishable, and sometimes unethical (as in James Comey’s case). But for the people in Trumpworld, loyalty to him is an absolute and unyielding necessity, akin to followers’ devotion to a cult leader.

Donald Trump was uncannily intuitive and extremely perceptive. He seemed to be able to sense when certain individuals were susceptible to being influenced by his power and abiding by his loyalty demands—as was seen later with people like his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, his first campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and Hope Hicks. His demands increased over time, as did the loyalty of his followers.

Even if people are banished from Trumpworld, it’s usually only temporary. No one can ever leave for good. As soon as you get out, they reel you back in, like ousted adviser Steve Bannon (now back on in an unofficial capacity), fired campaign manager Lewandowski (now working at Mike Pence’s PAC, or political action committee), and personal aide John McEntee (now on the Trump reelection campaign).

Treating someone with love and kindness after abuse is a classic cult tactic. I felt myself being manipulated, but refused to allow that to happen.

The change in my mind and heart was due to a combination of factors, but mainly, my growing realization that Donald Trump was indeed a racist, a bigot, and a misogynist.

The Donald Trump of 2018 is not the same man he was in 2003. When I met him, many of our beliefs were aligned. He identified with Democrats and supported commonsense gun control, like banning assault weapons; legalizing marijuana; universal health care; and even a tax hike on the wealthy. He thought Hillary Clinton was a “great” senator and donated money to her campaigns and at least $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

But when I was growing up, food stamps were actual colored stamps in multiple denominations. I remember circling the store and trying to wait until the other shoppers cleared out of the grocery store so they wouldn’t see me putting the stamps on the counter to pay. The looks were withering, and the stigma was real.

To my knowledge, the United States is the only country in the world that has created a separate currency for its poor. To me, it seems to be a form of intentionally shaming those in need.

“I am somebody, I may be poor, but I am somebody! I may be on welfare, but I am somebody! I must be, because I am God’s child! I must be respected and protected! I am beautiful and black and I am somebody!”

for as long as I’ve known the man, being offensive, inappropriate, and off-color is normal for him. The longer you live in Trumpworld, the more normal things like a work party at the Playboy Mansion seem to you. The Apprentice events were always populated with celebrities and models and his family. It wasn’t so far a leap to include nude models and porn stars. I made the rounds, skirting the grotto because God knows what went on in there, and talked to anyone who wasn’t in a thong.

To Trump, it didn’t matter that his children were not seasoned professionals. He prized loyalty over experience; Don Jr. and Ivanka were nothing if not devoted to their father. His children would never challenge his judgment or overshadow him as the show’s star.

Gene Simmons of KISS, a close friend of Donald’s, was the most disgusting misogynist I had ever met. On day one, he walked right up to another candidate, Carol Alt, a model and former Playboy cover girl, talked revoltingly about his famously elongated tongue, and then stuck it into her mouth. She gagged in front of me. When he started walking toward me with his tongue out, I ran. At one point, Simmons was taken off the men’s team and put with the women’s team, despite the fact that just about every one of the women on the show had complained to producers about his offensive behavior. As far as I could tell, they didn’t care. The producers loved it. Trump loved it, too.

If Trump could, against every odd there was, become president, the only item on his to-do list would be to erase the legacy of Barack Obama by undoing his policies. And it sounds shallow, it sounds stupid, it sounds harmful, but that’s just the reality from my perspective, and I had a very unique view as this unfolded.

The racial tension in our nation was being played up for ratings on the show. Mark Burnett was the mastermind of creating conflict. Burnett had been in the British military, where he’d learned tactics like creating conflict to divide the enemy and conquer them. I’d been involved in the franchise from the very beginning, and I saw how he divided teams by gender, by class, by race. He honed this type of conflict-baiting on the social experiment of Survivor, and he naturally brought those tactics to The Apprentice.

Donald and I had a symbiotic relationship, as I’ve said. I gave him ratings, and he gave me, a woman of color, opportunities, again and again, which, in turn, gave him someone to point to and say, “I’m not a racist misogynist! Look at all I’ve done for Omarosa!”

People joke that Trump gets his talking points by watching Fox News, and that is certainly true. But individuals at Fox News are also speaking directly to his team of advisers every single day. The channel’s channels are wide-open.

The O’Jays sent a cease-and-desist letter to Congressman John Mica (R-FL) and copied Paul Manafort via their attorney, demanding that the campaign stop using their 1972 hit “Love Train” (which we’d changed to “Trump Train”) or 1973’s “For the Love of Money,” which had been The Apprentice theme song for fourteen seasons, at any Trump or Republican rally or event. The O’Jays’s Walter Williams and Eddie Levert said in a press statement, “We don’t appreciate having our music associated with a campaign that is hurtful to so many with whom we have common ground. . . . Our music, and most especially ‘Love Train,’ is about bringing people together, not building walls.” I was devastated—not only were the O’Jays one of my favorite groups, they were friends from Ohio, and I participated every year in their charity events. That one hit close to home.

Donald Trump’s single greatest character flaw as a leader and human being is his complete and total lack of empathy.

We went from Barack Obama, a scholar, an academic, to Donald Trump, who was just this side of functionally literate.

I’ll go on the record and say that Donald Trump has never read from beginning to end any of the major pieces of legislation, policies, or even some of these executive orders that he has signed. Senior advisors spoon-feed him five to ten bullet points about the legislation and forgo any discussion of the complexities. To this day, his team pushes through Trump’s EOs and bills, and Donald has only a surface-level understanding of the content he’s signing into law.

Sean had difficulty pronouncing certain words, so we would have to go through each one phonetically with him. He also stuttered a lot when he got really nervous, which could make him appear to be lying when he was not. He was just nervous.

Obama read Where the Wild Things Are to the kids. Trump was not going to read in public if he could help it, not even a children’s book, so that duty fell on Melania, who entertained the kids by reading Kathie Lee Gifford’s Party Animals on the South Lawn with dignity and grace.

I should have protected myself. But there are no manuals about how to deal with your mentor of nearly fifteen years who becomes the president of the United States. I should have set boundaries, gone through the proper channels. But I believed that Donald would protect me if anything came up. If you made it into his inner circle, he would move heaven and earth to protect you. But there came a point when Donald could not protect me, or himself for that matter.

Of the four elder Trump children, Eric was the easiest, always kind and pleasant to be around. I believe he was Melania’s favorite.

Kelly and I spoke to each other exactly twice. The first time was in his office during a meeting where he informed me that Secretary DeVos wanted to cancel the fall HBCU conference (more on that later), and second, when he locked me in the Situation Room and threatened me with a court martial.

The idea of limiting Trump’s exposure to people might have seemed wise at first. But what it actually did was cut him off from trusted friends who kept him grounded and somewhat sane.

Trump’s greatest character flaw is his total lack of empathy, which is itself a function of his extreme narcissism.

I believe Melania uses style to punish her husband. It’s my opinion that Melania was forced to go to the border that day in June, essentially, to mop up her husband’s mess.