President Trump said on Monday that the N-word is not ‘in my vocabulary,’ after Omarosa Manigault Newman, former director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison and former contestant on “The Apprentice,” claimed she heard a tape where he used the term “multiple times.”
Further making his case, the president said Mark Burnett, the former television producer of “The Apprentice,” called to say that there was no documentation of Trump using the word, after Manigault Newman said that a production staff member for “The Apprentice” was seeking to use the tapes for “politically motivated things” before November.
[More: Omarosa: I was fired because I was ‘this close’ to finding a recording of Trump using the N-word]
“.@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa,” Trump tweeted Monday. “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up. Look at her MANY recent quotes saying……..such wonderful and powerful things about me – a true Champion of Civil Rights – until she got fired.”
“Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didn’t want interviews) when she worked in the White House,” Trump added. “Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!”
.@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up. Look at her MANY recent quotes saying….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2018
Burnett is now chairman of MGM Worldwide Television Group. MGM studios did not immediately respond to a request from the Washington Examiner.
Manigault Newman is preparing to release a book critical of the Trump administration called “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.” The book is scheduled to be released Tuesday.
Manigault Newman has stirred up controversy about the term, as she appeared to contradict her own book in an interview with NPR on Friday when she said she had heard President Trump use the “N-word” on a tape.
Reporters who have had early access to her book say she wrote she never heard Trump say the word during his reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Rather, she claimed in the book she heard from unnamed sources that he had used the term.
According to the Huffington Post, Manigault Newman told fellow White House staffers that a Troy McClain, a who was also an “Apprentice” contestant, played the tape for her where Trump used the offensive term in December 2017.
McClain admitted that he met her late last year, but claimed he never played such a tape for her. “You’ve got to be bullshitting me. Is this a joke?” McClain told HuffPo.
In an interview with NPR last week, Manigault Newman claimed she had finally heard the tape.
Others have questioned the claims made in the book. For example, George Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, denied allegations included in Manigualt Newman’s book that Trump had used derogatory terms like “flip” and a “goo goo” to describe him.
“The allegation is not credible, and indeed is ridiculous, particularly in light of the timing of her departure from the White House — December 12, 2017,” George Conway, who is half-Filipino, tweeted. “It’s absurd all around.”
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.”
