Former President Donald Trump claims that “Apprentice” star Omarosa Maginault’s brief stint as a member of his cabinet was a pity hire.
The reality TV maverick-turned-politician unleashed a scathing account of his thoughts on the Howard University alumna in the new book “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass,” penned by Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh.
Omarosa first appeared on television in 2004 as a villainous contestant vying for the $250,000 contract to run one of the businessman’s properties. She lasted nine weeks before being told “you’re fired” by Trump in a boardroom meeting.
She went on to reappear on his spinoffs “The Celebrity Apprentice” and “The Ultimate Merger.” Trump thought her “evil” persona would be good for ratings, and ultimately they forged a bond. During his first presidential campaign, Omarosa worked as his director of African-American outreach.
When Trump was elected president in 2016, he took her to the nation’s capital, where she served as an assistant to the president and the director of the Office of Public Liaison. She held the position for less than a year before being booted in December 2017 — though she has long held that she chose to resign on her own terms.
The embattled Trump told Setoodeh that he “saw her very little in the White House” before her departure. He added that “the White House is a very big place! It’s buildings, actually. But the people hated her in Washington.”
Trump further shared that “her personality” and the fact that “she was late all the time. She wouldn’t show up,” were contributing factors for others disdain for Maginault.
Omarosa brings a new secret recording to #TheView of Donald Trump crashing a WH meeting to start rambling about Hillary Clinton. Recording includes the voices of Sarah Huckabee and Hope Hicks. pic.twitter.com/N9qi8JdUOF
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) September 10, 2018
According to the recently convicted felon, he “tried to rehabilitate her reputation as an experiment. And when I did, I said, ‘This probably won’t work out, but let’s see what happens.’ And I also said … ‘When she gets fired, you always have to pay a price.’ It’s too bad. In the White House, she didn’t cut the mustard.”
“I helped her get a job at the White House because she was begging me to help restore her. So I figured, why not? I put her in,” revealed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “I told people when we hired her, I said, ‘When we fire her, we’ll have nothing but trouble.’ But that’s OK. That’s the way life goes. A lot of things I do in life, I do as an experiment,” he added.
The New York real estate professional went to elaborate on his tests of loyalty, saying that his former aide “was actually really great to me, until she left. And then after she left, she got a book deal, and she made some money. They could all do that. But they are scumbags when they do.”
Omarosa turned on him in 2018 when she released “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House.” The tell-all gave her accounts of the leader of the free world being unfit to run the nation.
She destroyed any chance at smoothing things over with Trump when she made secret recordings of his political discussions available to the public and called him a “con man” who used racist epithets. “He has reserved his worst insults and his harshest language for women of color,” she said during an interview with “Erin Burnett OutFront” last year.
She has since made her return to reality TV, recently starring on the debut season of E!’s “House of Villains.”
