Omarosa Manigault-Newman said she's "not trolling" the White House with her decision to release secretly taped conversations with Chief of Staff John Kelly and Trump.
The former Trump aide joined Trevor Noah on The Daily Show on Tuesday night to talk about her new tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the White House, and why she made the recordings — including one which reportedly discusses the existence of an Apprentice outtake tape in which Trump allegedly uses a racial slur.
"I'm not trolling them. I just want them to know that everything that you see in Unhinged, that’s quoted, can be verified as documented and corroborated." she said.
On the recordings, Manigault-Newman told Noah she knew she had to record what she saw as "corruption" happening in the White House — although notably said she had to be "very careful," speaking about the recordings on the show, revealing that the president has decided to "bring litigation against me, to silence me and to not allow me to tell my story."
"This White House has a credibility issue," she said. "I knew that I had to cover my back and document what I saw as an opportunity to blow the whistle on a lot of the corruption going on in the White House. I knew that I needed to document that corruption otherwise people would not take it seriously."
Noah noted that he personally would not have believed Manigault-Newman if she had not made the recordings, because of her role in the Trump administration.
"I wouldn't have believed you," said Noah. "Genuinely, because I don't think I believe many of the people that come out of the White House, because you don't know what to believe when you've been gaslighted to a point that you don't know what the truth is."
Noah noted that Manigault-Newman has chosen not to release all of the recordings she made, instead deciding to unleash them one-by-one.
"You're releasing all the singles, when we're waiting for the album," he said, asking whether Manigault-Newman's staggered approach to contradicting the White House's denials with recorded proof was a long-term strategy.
"I'll be honest, when [Trump campaign national spokesperson and senior adviser] Katrina Pierson came out and made that long statement that she had never had any conversations related to the n-word tape, she never remembered talking to me, none of that happened, in fact, she said I was writing a script for a movie, I was sitting back going, 'Really?'
"And I never intended to share that, I didn't even remember that I really had it, but when she was just so vehement that it never happened, I was like, 'It never happened? Not one conversation?'
"And so I did, I decided to share it to expose her, [former senior assistant to Eric Trump] Lynne Patton, [chief campaign spokesman] Jason Miller, and the Trump campaign because there was a lot of talk about this n-word tape that so many people are pursuing and that folks refuse to release. So yes, I shared it."
When asked about the White House disputing the details of her book, Manigault-Newman told Noah she 100 percent expected denial from the administration.
"Absolutely, because they lied to the American people every single day. So, it doesn't surprise me that when they're faced with the truth, they'll push back," she said.
"They lied to the American people every single day. So, it doesn't surprise me that when they're faced with the truth, they'll push back."
"You were part of an organisation, a team that lied to the American people every day," replied Noah.
"Unfortunately, and I regret that. I was totally complicit. But I didn't go in thinking we were going to lie," she said.
Before wrapping up the interview, Noah asked Manigault-Newman, as someone who has known Trump for 15 years, for her advice on dealing with the president.
"There's one way to shut Donald Trump down, and that is just don't give him the oxygen. And the oxygen comes from the clicks, the likes, the shock, the discussions," she said, using the reaction against Trump's attack on basketball star LeBron James as a perfect example.
"Donald Trump enjoyed every moment of that. He enjoyed every single person that was shocked by his abrasiveness, his attack on this African-American male athlete, which is his favorite, go-to thing. He loved it and he thrived off of it. If you ignore him, then you starve him of the thing that he loves the most, and that is controversy and attention."
To be honest, writing an entire book about the Trump administration sounds like a lot of oxygen given to the president, but exposing political truths can take a lot of necessary heavy breathing.
