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President Donald Trump escalated his nasty Twitter broadside against Omarosa Manigault Newman on Tuesday, insulting his former White House aide as a “dog.”
In a tweet, Trump also called Newman — who over the prior two days had provided to NBC audio recordings made in the White House of Trump and chief of staff John Kelly — “crazed” and a “lowlife.”
“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 wrote. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
The insults pick up where Trump left off on Monday, when he ripped Newman “wacky” and “vicious but not smart” and said “people in the White House hated her.” He called her “nasty,” claimed she constantly missed work and noted that Kelly had told him she was a “loser” and “nothing but problems.”
Trump hasn’t shied away from using the word “dog” as an insult against his enemies before. In June 2016, he slammed Mitt Romney for having “choked like a dog” in the 2012 presidential race. Earlier that year, he blasted former NBC News journalist David Gregory for having been “fired like a dog,” and said the same about conservative commentator Erick Erickson after he left the RedState blog. He’s used the word to insult Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Glenn Beck and NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
Trump’s tweet Tuesday came on the official release day of Manigault Newman’s book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” in which she slammed the president as racist and in mental decline.
On Monday, Newman, the former “Apprentice” contestant who became a White House aide, provided to NBC a 2017 audio recording on which Trump expresses surprise that she’d been fired from his administration.
The tape, which was played exclusively Monday on the “Today” show and drew a harsh attack from Trump on Manigault Newman just hours later, appears to show the president having no idea that she had been dismissed by Kelly.
“Nobody even told me about it,” Trump says on the tape. “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it.”
A day earlier, Manigault Newman had told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” in an exclusive interview, that she has personally heard a tape of Trump using the N-word during filming for “The Apprentice” — a revelation she says “confirmed that he is truly a racist.”
Manigault Newman has also said she has more tapes in possession.