Donald Trump lashes out at former White House aide over tape

US President Donald Trump on Monday lashed out in a flurry of tweets against former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, calling her “lowlife”, “vicious” and incompetent while acknowledging it’s “not presidential” to confront her.

“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. 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...,” Trump said.

“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!,” Trump tweeted.

He went to say in another tweet that while he knows it’s “not presidential” to take on a “lowlife like Omarosa, 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!”

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Newman, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show Apprentice, has provided an audio recording from 2017 and in which Trump is heard expressing surprise that she had been fired from his administration.

In the tape, which was played exclusively on Monday on NBC’s Today show, Trump is heard saying “Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?”

Newman has said the tape was made one day after her termination in December 2017 when Trump called her.

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She responds, “General Kelly—General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave,” a reference to White House chief of staff John Kelly.

“Nobody even told me about it,” Trump replies. Newman then says, “Wow,” before Trump reiterates his shock.

“You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it,” Trump says. “I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all,” Trump is heard saying in the tape.