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

by Omarosa Manigault Newman

I lay some of the blame for Hillary’s low turnout on those assurances from the media that her victory was a sure thing. Voter behavior indicates that if voters believe their candidate has it in the bag, they will not, for example, take off work to go vote and lose a day’s wages, believing their vote isn’t needed. The press actually demotivated her base. If they’d reported the truth, that the race was very close, there is no doubt in my mind that they would have turned out for her.

One of our campaign slogans had been “Drain the Swamp,” but the cabinet quickly filled with swamp creatures, mainly white men, each new tap setting off a firestorm of criticism, as people called out the hypocrisy.

Everybody liked to point out Donald Trump’s obsession with generals. He confided to me that he thought the generals would send a message to the world that he was “badass.”

He asked me, “Omarosa, what do you think about me getting sworn in on The Art of the Deal?” I said, “Instead of the Bible?” “Yeah. The Art of the Deal is a bestseller! It’s the greatest business book of all time. It’s how I’m going to make great deals for the country. Just think how many copies I’d sell—maybe a commemorative inauguration copy?!”

Trump, Pence, and their posse were undoing any hope of connecting with women and minorities. He’d surrounded himself only with elite, wealthy, white, conservative men. I’d agreed to take on an epic responsibility to be the voice of my community and women of color in the White House, and I realized at that moment just how steep my climb was going to be.

Donald is not a big reader. While working with him side by side on my own briefings, I’d come to understand that he read at an eighth- or ninth-grade level. That’s fine for some, but for the leader of the free world? We went from Barack Obama, a scholar, an academic, to Donald Trump, who was just this side of functionally literate.

He might joke about getting rid of presidential term limits, but his real agenda is to ensure his legacy for decades to come in the judiciary. And if that doesn’t scare you, it should. He’s quietly succeeding at this.