Omarosa Manigault Newman’s new assertion that chief of staff John Kelly is “running the White House” while President Trump “has no clue what’s going on” stands in stark contrast to recent reporting. For Omarosa, it marks another suspect claim in a book tour that’s been full of them.
The former reality star floated the latest of those claims on a major platform Monday morning, the day before her book release, telling Savannah Guthrie of the “Today” show that Trump “doesn’t even know what’s happening in his White House. John Kelly is running this White House, and Donald Trump has no clue what’s going on. He’s being puppeted, and that’s very dangerous for this nation.”
Omarosa’s comments came after “Today” played audio she secretly recorded of Trump calling after her firing in December to say, “Nobody even told me about it. You know, they run a big operation but I didn’t know it.” It seems pretty plausible, by the way, that Trump was feigning ignorance on the call to maintain his friendly relationship with the former staffer.
Recent reporting suggests Omarosa’s claim that Trump is being “puppeted” by Kelly is the opposite of reality. Late last month, Politico ran a piece based on a dozen sources detailing “How John Kelly became ‘chief in name only.'”
“Kelly, people around him say, no longer works to keep his mercurial boss on task or on message, with a Republican close to the White House referring to him as a ‘chief of staff in name only,'” the story said.
“Many of Trump’s friends and advisers have concluded the president doesn’t really want a chief of staff — and he has several confidants urging him to operate without one,” reported Politico. “But for this president, keeping Kelly around offers the best of both worlds: somebody to blame when things go awry but nobody fettering his freedom of action.” Politico also noted “nearly all the traces of the martial regime Kelly initially sought to impose have vanished.”
In late June, the Wall Street Journal reported that “in recent months, Mr. Kelly’s grip on West Wing operations has loosened.”
“One person close to the White House said Mr. Kelly doesn’t believe he can serve Mr. Trump well because the president has stopped listening to him,” that report asserted, quoting Steve Bannon saying, “It’s been very obvious for the last four or five months that President Trump has run the White House with an organizational structure that has left Kelly in a ceremonial position.”
And there’s more plenty more reporting where that came from.
The point is that Omarosa hasn’t worked in the White House for more than half a year, and is not making her claims about the president in good faith. It’s true that under normal circumstances a former White House staffer’s explosive allegations about the president would be very newsworthy. But Omarsoa is not a normal source, and her credibility and motivations are highly questionable. More than likely, she’s muddying the already muddy waters with more incorrect information about the White House.
For all the concerns about the importance of maintaining (or restoring) public trust in the news media, you would think major outlets might care more about their integrity than their short-term ratings and stop giving Omarosa a platform to promote her dubious claims about Trump.
