Trump Calls Former Apprentice Star a Dog, Feud Escalates
On a chilly Tuesday in August, President Donald Trump took his displeasure public, labeling former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” and sparking the next chapter of their celebrity feud. Newman, once a contestant on Trump’s reality show The Apprentice, has been sounding the alarm by releasing audio clips and a tell‑all book titled Unhinged, aiming to paint a very different picture of her year in the Oval Office.
What went down
- Trump’s tweet, directed at Chief of Staff John Kelly,: “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General (John) Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
- Newman’s book accuses the president of saying slurs about minorities and describing him as “forgetful” and “frustrated.” She claims his mental decline is “undeniable.”
- Newman released an audio clip of her firing by Kelly and a call from Trump claiming he was unaware of her dismissal.
- A disputed recording surfaced, allegedly featuring Trump and campaign aides discussing a potential fallout from a tape of him using a racial slur during an The Apprentice episode. The media house that published Unhinged also owns the publisher of the book.
- Trump denies the existence of such a tape, and a White House spokeswoman said she couldn’t guarantee the recording never surfaces, but the president addressed the claim directly.
- The campaign has filed arbitration over alleged breach of a 2016 confidentiality agreement.
Reactions
Critics, including Representative Frederica Wilson and Senator Jeff Flake, condemned Trump’s tweet as “unbecoming” and “racist,” calling for republicans to confront the president’s language. The public further split as some see the tweet as a careless moment, while others view it as a veiled attack.
Why this matters
Between disgraced reality‑TV tenant and a president who’s more widely known for his tweet‑tactics, the saga underscores how politics and celebrity collide in a noisy, ever‑changing media landscape. For the former The Apprentice star, the fight is more than just a fight for the record—it’s about owning her narrative as she walks a town hall cross‑road, backed by a book, audio clips, and a stubborn refusal to let her story be silenced.
