The pissing contest that’s broken out between Trump and his “reality” TV “star” pal might have some significant implications for the Mueller investigation. Hard as it is to believe, and even though it’s for the wrong reasons (payback, revenge etc.) Omarosa Maginault Newman might actually do American a favor. She just might provide both directly and indirectly some significant evidence to Robert Mueller and his team.
I never watched The Apprentice. I’ve noted here (and elsewhere) that back in the 1980s when he made himself nationally known I wasn’t impressed with Trump. I thought he was an asshole then, and he’s a (much) bigger one now — proof that even with a ton of money what we think of as “class” can’t be bought. It’s no wonder high society in his beloved NYC has looked down its nose at him. In any case, about the only thing I ever saw of his “reality” show (people actually think that crap is real? That it isn’t scripted? I’m not a fan of any such show!) was the last minute or so because I’d tuned into the channel for what was coming on next. IOW I didn’t know who Omarosa was — apparently she was some kind of “villan”on the show.
The first time I actually knew who she was actually shocked me — that statement I kept seeing played where she so forcefully told everyone they would have to bow down to Donald Trump. Then, and since my reaction has been I’d rather take a fucking bullet to the head. I don’t have a family to take care of. For me it would be like being back in the Corps and if captured winding up dead because I wouldn’t submit to some captor’s demands I “submit” to their authority. I’d rather have been dead. And when it comes to Trump I feel the same way.
I’ll confess to being amused at her firing. From what I could pick up whenever her actions at the WH were mentioned on the news is that no one seemed to know what she was actually doing other than running around and going to meetings — none of which seemed to be about her (supposed) role in being in charge of outreach to minorities. Somehow I think a lot of minorities felt the same way about her “you WILL bow down to Trump” bullshit as I did. Unfortunately, or perhaps as the title of this diary suggests fortunately I didn’t learn much about her until the lead up to her book coming out. I know she was major league pissed at being unceremoniously tossed out of the White House. And from what I learned about her more recently I figured she was the type to hold a grudge — that villain role on the TV show didn’t require much acting on her part.
It’s started to look like she’s a version of Trump himself. No sense of shame and an intense desire for the spotlight. And someone who will fight as dirty and sleazy in the kind of world Trump inhabits as he does. I never thought she was stupid. Not MENSA material, but not stupid and in fact probably loaded with the same trait Trump possesses — street savvy. It’s easy to underestimate such people, especially when they have no sense of shame. I believe Omarosa always knew she was a racial token for Trump to display but she was well paid and got a lot of the fame she clearly craves in the process. Being savvy, I believe she probably learned after a short time that everyone, and I mean everyone (including his kids) is disposable to Trump. Certainly someone playing her part in Trump’s world would be. Kiss his ass both in private and public and the fame and money would continue, but piss him off even by accident and he wouldn’t think twice about having Keith Schiller (his now infamous bodyguard) toss her out of Trump Tower and have every security guard at every Trump property learn to recognize her even if she tried to disguise herself.
Given all that, I figure that within a few years (if it took that long) Omarosa started covering her own ass, and gathering every tidbit of dirt she could. The funny thing is, the longer she stayed in Trump’s orbit playing the role of token minority (both female & African American — a “twofer” and we know Trump loves his deals!) the more juice she’d have if, or more likely when the moment came when she was on the receiving end of “You’re fired!” I’m sure that like everyone else she assumed Trump wouldn’t win the nomination, and even when he did that he wouldn’t win the Presidency even with Putin putting the Russian thumb on the scales. But she kept close and kept gathering dirt on Trump and Trump’s other people all along the way. And when Trump needed a token in the WH to pay lip service to the notion of minority outreach she had the most important qualification (to Trump) of all — (apparent) unquestioned loyalty and a willingness to kiss his ass in front of others. So she got a nice job (at taxpayer expense) doing nothing except hanging around the West Wing and horning in on meetings that actually were (or supposed to be at least) important and just barging into offices and gabbing with folks. It seems they were terrified of her — that she’d run to Trump and rat them out for not being loyal enough.
Then John Kelly comes along and given his own desires to take his racist policies he’d enacted at DHS to the next level by making the White House functional (IOW more efficient in implementing them) and cuts off access to Trump. Even Omarosa found herself walled off from Trump, at least in person. If Trump was undergoing withdrawl from having her and others running in and out of the Oval Office and fluffing his ego all day long, for someone like Omarosa who’s currency of her realm was complete access at any time to Trump it was frightening. If she was no better than the rest of the staff the fear she provoked would dwindle. Still, she could (as we have seen via an audiotape) call Trump directly at night. OTOH she probably wondered if her time was rapidly running out. I think if she’d been truly surprised at Kelly locking her into the situation room for a long session of “you’re out of the WH but we’ll take care of you at 15k per month at the RNC and/or the re-election campaign if you sign here on the dotted line) she’d have signed right then and there. She could still have called Trump at night and maybe seen him at rallies where he’d point to her (for the TV audience) as “proof he wasn’t racist.”
However the street savvy part of Omarosa knew in her heart that wouldn’t be good enough to maintain her personal power over non Trump family people in this excuse of an administration.
I believe from the time he was announced as President Elect she started making contingency plans in case something happened that would lead to her ouster. Sure, as we know she recorded people (and who knows what records she copied?) during the campaign but she likely went into overdrive in the WH itself. Think about the fact she snuck a recording device of some sort into the Situation Room. That is stunning, especially for a civilian who would get extra scrutiny before being allowed in there.
Yet she was prepared when Kelly sat her down for their “exit interview.”
She knew what was coming alright, and had to have been considering the possibility for a long time including how to sneak a recording device into any room in the WH including the Situation Room — just in case. We’ve learned that wasn’t her first trip down there btw which is itself stunningly disturbing. That’s a whole different diary, but for this one I’ll stick to the fact that she got a chance to see security procedures including surrendering electronic devices and security checks. And figured out a way to beat it. She was prepared before the moment ever came which means she’d been thinking about it for a while.
That makes it safe to assume she’d been plotting for some time how to extract some payback when her time came. It would have been easy enough for her to take the 15k/month no real work gig and keep her mouth shut. But my gut tells me that over fifteen years with Trump she, like Michael Cohen saw how disposable people were to Donald Trump. Hell, it’s not a given he wouldn’t throw his own kids under the bus if he needed/needs to and we know Cohen (for all his bluster) kept a lot of records including voice recordings of a lot of people including his “hero” Trump. I can’t picture Cohen and Omarosa trading thoughts on how to protect themselves “just in case” but it’s impossible not to think they crossed paths sometimes. Suck up grifters like them tend to be able to recognize kindred spirits and where Omarosa is concerned I’m sure she saw Trump denigrate Cohen over and over — and wondered what he’d say about HER behind her back.
So the upshot is that Omarosa hired on to play a specific role and she did her job well — Trump kept her around for a long time and even help her gain a measure of fame/notoriety. Given his need for constant praise and how good she was at consistently telling him what he wanted to hear (African Americans will love you sir!) she got all the way into a Senior “Policy” position in an actual Presidential Administration. But for me the significant fact is we now know she was recording people during the campaign! IOW she was building an “insurance policy” well before being in the White House itself, and you have to wonder how long before the campaign she was doing so. Still, what matters most is that sometime during the campaign she started gathering information in case she needed it later — either to cover her butt (legally) or get revenge. Or both.
That ladies and gents is why she might actually wind up doing something good. It might be the right thing for the wrong reason but at this point I don’t care. If she’s got stuff Mueller can use then by all means I’ll accept Mueller taking advantage of it. As with Manafort and Gates, Gate’s might be a dirtbag but all of his accusations can be backed up. If Omarosa has recordings and perhaps even documents to back her up then her being a dirtbag doesn’t change actual records or people’s voices on audio recordings. And she apparently didn’t skimp on what she used to make those recordings as the ones I’ve heard are clear as a bell. Omarosa has stated she’s already been interviewed by Mueller’s people but declined to say whether it was in front of a Grand Jury. One can infer from what she’s said so far they didn’t ask questions that she could have helped them with — perhaps it was just an interview on some general matters. Or they weren’t ready to pin her down on certain matters during her first go round. In any case it seems she believes she has information and even actual evidence they would like to see. It remains to be seen if that’s true but it’s intriguing as hell.
However, that might not be the best part.
Keep in mind she routinely sat in on meetings about whatever because she could — pre Kelly people were flat out afraid of her.
She wasn’t doing any real work, and spent her days chatting up whomever she wanted to. A lot, and I mean a lot of WH staff have had sit downs with Mueller’s team. Here’s where it gets fun. What if they withheld information they should have volunteered, or even lied about what they saw/heard? And since we know Omarosa was going around taping people (and, I believe gathering records when she could) and emailing/texting back and forth on this & that I suspect there are people in the White House (or people who have already left — the extraordinary turnover isn’t limited to the top folks) in a cold sweat about having been taped. Or their emails being saved to Omarosa’s “special file.” People who are thinking about what they said to her or what she heard them say to someone else and might have recorded!
Is it just me or are a lot of lawyers in DC suddenly seeing a boost in billable hours? Anyone who interviewed with Mueller and maybe fudged things a bit (or worse, flat out lied) or went into the Grand Jury room and did so will be talking with their lawyers about “correcting the record” and begging for mercy. Without even going back for more interviews/Grand Jury testimony Omarosa has likely just generated a whole lot more evidence for Mueller. Think about all those assistants who can testify as to who met with whom or when, or helped draft this or that letter or statement, or sat in the corner taking notes for their boss while important (to Mueller) conversations were going on? Then consider that just to twist the knife some, Mueller’s investigators can follow up with all these folks in the next few weeks and ask “Is there anything you might have forgotten, or now that you’ve had a chance to think it over might have remembered “more accurately?” Again, none of those people know whether Omarosa recorded them, or saved any of their emails/texts or other documents they shared with her!
I suspect an awful lot of people who work in (or worked in) the Trump White House are losing a lot of sleep since this weekend. And will be losing a lot more in the days and weeks ahead.
Sometimes when you shake a tree things fall out — and sometimes it makes one hell of a mess on the ground. Omarosa has shaken the damned tree with one of those machines that can literally shake it so that the roots loosen and it can be lifted out of the ground!
Yes, she might have done/be doing it for all the wrong reasons, But if she was a minor league grifter when she was first hired by Trump, hanging around him seems to have made her into a major league one. In his league in fact. And since she knows full well how well he manipulates the narrative and knows what’s coming her way I can’t imagine that she isn’t prepared to fight fire with fire. It was said of Stormy Daniels that one reason Trump has barely mentioned her is that because she’s been so successful in her particular profession Trump knows he can’t shame her. If anything she can shame him, and do so with all those guys out there who nudge each other and chortle about him banging porn stars. Credibly “describing his junk” as average and expanding on the “two minute man” thing (she said it was over pretty quick) is the last thing Trump wants someone like Daniels out there talking about — that’s the kind of thing that could in fact hurt him with a lot of his male supporters out there.
Omarosa can hurt him even worse — legally with the Mueller investigation and like Daniels she won’t be shamed by Trump. Unlike Daniels who has a legal case to pursue and who has to protect hersel on some fronts Omarosa has nothing to lose. Yes, Trump has already filed for arbitration over an NDA related to the campaign but guess what? If Mueller calls Omarosa in as part of a formal legal proceeding that NDA isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It doesn’t matter if it’s a civil or criminal proceeding — an NDA isn’t enforceable in a courtroom including a Grand Jury room.
First Cohen, and now Omarosa are pretty much telling Mueller “I wanna sing like a canary!” The only difference is I believe Omarosa long ago realized the day would come when she was cast out of Trump World and made a choice to be ready to go to war if that did in fact occur. And unlike Cohen she was involved in the campaign and later part of the Trump White House.
It might make me want to puke, but I’m actually thinking that Omarosa of all people might turn out to play a key role in taking Trump down.