U.S. President Donald Trump resumed his attacks Tuesday on a former adviser, Omarosa Manigault Newman, calling her a "dog" who deserved to be fired.
In a Twitter comment, the U.S. leader praised his chief of staff, John Kelly, for dismissing her late last year. She was a long-time contestant on Trump's one-time reality television show, "The Apprentice," before Trump named her to a $179,700-a-year White House position, noting that she "only said GREAT things about me."
"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," Trump tweeted. "Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!"
Meanwhile, Trump's campaign filed for arbitration against Manigault Newman, claiming she violated a non-disclosure agreement she signed by writing a new book, "Unhinged," that is highly critical of Trump and his White House operations. It was published Tuesday.
While promoting her book, Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking African-American serving in the White House, has released audio tapes the last two days she recorded in the White House, one of Kelly firing her and a second of Trump seeming surprised that she had been ousted.
Trump's newest attack on her came a day after he described her as "Wacky Omarosa" and said she "was vicious, but not smart."
"Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time," Trump tweeted Monday. "She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!..."
Later, he half-apologized for his comments about her.
"While I know it’s 'not presidential' to take on a lowlife like Omarosa," he said, "and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!"
Trump's Monday tweets about Manigault Newman came a couple hours after she played an audio recording of a conversation she had with Trump seeming to show that the president was surprised that Kelly had fired her last December.
"Omarosa, what’s going on?" Trump said on the brief recording aired on NBC's "Today" show. Manigault Newman said the phone call occurred the day after Kelly ousted her. "I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving. What happened?" Trump said.
"General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave," Manigault Newman replied.
But Trump said, "No. Nobody even told me about it. You know, they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. (expletive)."
"I don’t love you leaving at all," he added, while not doing anything to block her dismissal.
On Sunday, Manigault Newman released a recording of Kelly firing her in the Situation Room, the supposedly secure inner sanctum of the White House where U.S. presidents discuss crucial national security issues and aides are supposed to leave electronic devices outside.
As he fired her, according to the recording, Kelly told Manigault Newman, “I think it’s important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure, we can all be, you know, you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation. And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future, relative to your reputation.”
Manigault Newman claims that she was offered a $15,000-a-month retainer as she left the White House to not criticize Trump or Vice President Mike Pence and their wives, but that she turned it down. She says she has other tapes she secretly made at the White House.
Trump's spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Sunday, "The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security — and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee."
The Republican Party tweeted: "Omarosa is ... 'Unbelievable.' 'Not credible.' 'Unethical.'”
