Omarosa Manigault Newman has released secret recordings of her conversations with Donald Trump and his chief of staff, John Kelly, which have made international headlines but have also left lingering questions.
What happened?
Manigault Newman says she secretly recorded Kelly firing her in the White House Situation Room in December 2017, and she played the recording on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday. On Monday, she released another recording, aired on NBC’s Today program, in which Trump appears to express surprise that she had been ousted.
The former White House aide, who had previously been a contestant on Trump’s reality television show The Apprentice, shared the recording as part of her promotional tour for her new book about her stint in the White House, Unhinged. The Guardian first reported excerpts from the book, which also included claims that Trump has used racial epithets.
Is this normal?
Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs in the Department of Homeland Security, pointed to Manigault Newman’s recording device as signifying the lack of “security culture” in the Trump administration. The former Obama administration aide noted that Trump has “essentially…
