George Conway said Friday morning that former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s claims that President Donald Trump used racist phrases when discussing Conway, who is half Filipino, are “ridiculous” and not credible.
Conway, an attorney who is married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, is a vocal critic of the president on Twitter. The Guardian reported Friday morning that Manigault Newman alleges in her book, Unhinged, that Trump responded to coverage of Conway’s criticism by slinging racial slurs degrading to Filipinos.
Conway says that doesn’t make sense, considering the timing of Manigault Newman’s departure.
“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,” Conway wrote in a tweet. “It’s absurd all around.”
Conway’s Twitter presence has received extensive media coverage due to both his wife’s place of employment and his willingness to pick fights with Trump, but he only really began posting explicit criticism on a regular basis in the early months of 2018. According to the Huffington Post, Conway sent only 31 tweets in 2017, about six of which were critical of Trump. But in March of 2018, he started posting much more frequently, adding up to around 200 tweets, about half of which HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg writes were critical of Trump.
Conway’s refutation on Friday seems to argue that Trump would not have taken notice of his criticism until it became more pronounced—which was after Manigault Newman left the White House.
The Guardian also reported Friday that Manigault Newman’s soon-to-be-released book makes other allegations against Trump, labeling him a racist who has used slurs about African Americans, and reiterating previous allegations that tapes exist from his time as host of NBC’s The Apprentice in which he used the N-word.
Although she insists the claims are true, the Guardian, which received an advance copy of the book, notes that Manigault-Newman does not go so far as to say that she heard Trump use the word herself.
She also writes in her book, without evidence, that she was fired because other White House aides thought she was close to finding the alleged tapes. (It could, of course, also have been due to her abuse of the official White House car service, or the fact that nobody in the administration really knew what her job was.)
“It had finally sunk in that the person I’d thought I’d known so well for so long was actually a racist. Using the N-word was not just the way he talks but, more disturbing, it was how he thought of me and African Americans as a whole,” she writes in her book.
