With Omarosa Manigault Newman going on the offensive against Donald Trump, it was only a matter of time before the president returned fire. This morning, Trump published a trio of tweets that probably say more about him than her. Here’s the whole series in its entirety:
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things.
“Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me – until she got fired!
“While I know it’s ‘not presidential’ to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!”
I won’t unpack all of this, but there are three things that jumped out at me as notable.
First, Trump’s preoccupation with talking about people “begging” him is a little creepy.
Second, the more the president describes Manigault Newman as someone who was disliked, “vicious,” “not smart,” and “nasty,” the more the White House should try to come up with some kind of explanation as to why Trump gave such a person a lucrative and high-ranking job in the White House.
And third, there’s the simple fact that Trump, according to his own version of events, kept on a White House adviser he knew to be toxic and incompetent, solely because she praised him. In other words, according to the president, even if the White House chief of staff identified someone on the team as a “loser” who causes “nothing but problems,” that person remained in Trump’s good graces — since she said nice things about Donald Trump. Indeed, by his own admission, the president instructed his chief of staff to keep her in place, not because of her job performance, and not because of her qualifications, but because of her compliments. It’s amazing that Trump is oblivious to how bad his own tweets make him look.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
