Penn Jillette, who was a contestant on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” said he was “in the room” when President Trump was recorded making “racially insensitive” remarks.
The claim follows Omarosa Manigault Newman, former director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison and former contestant on “The Apprentice,” asserting that she has heard a tape where Trump used the N-word multiple times.
“He would say racially insensitive things that made me uncomfortable,” Jillette, a magician, said in an interview with Vulture about Trump. “I don’t think he ever said anything in that room like ‘African-Americans are inferior’ or anything about rape or grabbing women, but of those two hours every other day in a room with him, every ten minutes was fingernails on chalkboard.”
Jillette was also pressed on whether there actually are tapes of Trump making such comments.
“Yeah, I was in the room,” Jillette said.
Jillette declined from elaborating on specifics, claiming he would be an “unreliable narrator.”
“I can emotionally tell you things that happened racially, sexually, and that showed stupidity and lack of compassion when I was in the room with Donald Trump and I guarantee you that I will get details wrong,” Jillette said.
Jillette participated in two seasons of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” one of which was an all-star season where Manigault Newman was a contestant.
[Related: Trump: ‘Apprentice’ producer called to say there are no N-word tapes]
Manigault Newman has made several explosive accusations while promoting her new book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.
Although the book claims that she heard from unnamed sources that Trump used the N-word, she has said in subsequent interviews that she has heard a tape of Trump using the term.
Trump said Monday evening that the N-word is “not in my vocabulary,” and claimed that Mark Burnett, former television producer of “The Apprentice” had called him to say there was no documentation of him using the word.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that she could not “guarantee” that no recordings of Trump using the N-word exist. She did say that she has “never heard him use that term or anything similar.”
The White House announced in December that Manigault Newman was leaving her post. She told ABC’s “Nightline” the same month that during her time at the White House, there “were a lot of things that I observed during the last year that I was very unhappy with.”
