I never watched The Apprentice season with Omarosa Manigault on it (the Internet tells me it was season one). I understand from cultural osmosis that she was a villain type person; I will take it on faith, given that she works in the Trump White House, that she is quite terrible and in fact The Worst. And yet The Daily Beast has a long, nice story sexplaining why everyone in the White House (except Donald Trump) hates Omarosa, and the reasons they can come up with are SOME SEXIST BULLSHIT (and doubtless also racist, #intersectional-styley; I will leave that to black people to suss out).
Back in March, Joy-Ann Reid wrote a long reported piece for the Daily Beast exploring why people are hating on Omarosa that was both filled with named sources and WASN'T SEXIST BULLSHIT. She spoke to black conservatives who had specific issues with Manigault: She's a Democrat; she's always pulling "bend the knee" nonsense with longtime black Republicans who should have been killed with kindness instead; and she works for Trump, who's an out white supremacist, so she's got a tough sell.
The Daily Beast's follow-up to that, this thing, is a whole bunch of anonymous bitching about, like, "she interrupts a lot." Let's sexplore!
According to four sources in and outside the West Wing, the longtime Trump confidant is isolated inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as she quietly plots against her fellow senior officials. Colleagues regularly complain about Manigault’s behavior and work ethic. She frequently derails internal meetings with irrelevant or counterproductive interjections and she’s earned a reputation for attempting to micromanage White House communications operations.
She also makes the White House's top rate, $179,000 -- a salary so high, it caused the president's body man, Keith Schiller, to You're Fired himself rather than have to attempt to live on it. Since when should a woman make 100 cents on the dollar of what all these dudes we've never heard of make? Is that even LEGAL?
How does she derail things, Daily Beast?
One such incident took place in April, when the communications staff met to strategize ways to respond to an emerging story about whether White House and administration officials had signed an ethics pledge imposed by an executive order, and whether any had received waivers from provisions of that pledge. Manigault attended the meeting, the Republican official said. But instead of helping to plot strategy, she bragged about the waiver her personal attorney was going to secure for her.
I don't know, that seems kind of on point? Shit, at least she was going to get a waiver instead of just ignoring the Emoluments clause of the United States Constitution, like some people who are president of the United States. Surely there is worse, Daily Beast?
White House officials say that during meetings that include Manigault, aides will often take out their smartphones and start messaging each other saying they wished she would stop talking or leave the room entirely.
White House staffers hate Omarosa Manigault because they are the sorority girls in Neighbors 2: The Sorority-ing, except without the adorable baby feminism that is fucking adorable. That is tautological, Daily Beast! (If you haven't seen Neighbors 2, with Zach Efron learning that calling girls "ho's" just isn't cool anymore, bro, it is delightful!)
Another source familiar with Manigault’s portfolio said she would occasionally attend prep sessions for the White House daily briefing. “She would come and bring up random, off-topic stuff,” the source said. “She would raise issues and never have a solution.”
Oh no, how dare she bring up something that might be an issue for people to try to solve TOGETHER. What a fuckin' bitch, raining on all those doubtless perfect parades.
At the same time, Manigault’s duties in the OPL have gone less than smoothly. Last month, Manigault spoke on a panel at the annual National Association of Black Journalists conference in New Orleans to discuss police violence in black communities. She was repeatedly confronted by panelists and others in attendance, many of whom hissed and booed her, in part over her boss’s public encouragement of police brutality.
Omarosa is to blame for being booed by black people because her boss loves Nazis. Seems legit!
Those and other controversies—such as Manigault’s decision to give herself the title “The Honorable” in a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus—have caused headaches in the White House press shop.
Hahahaha, FAIR. That was a disaster.
Despite those headaches, Manigault has outlasted a chief of staff, a chief strategist, two communications directors, a National Security Adviser, and a press secretary, among other officials. But she’s also been relegated to the White House fringes—literally and figuratively. Sources said former chief of staff Reince Priebus and ex Press Secretary Spicer took pains to ensure her office remained in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and not in the West Wing itself.
Also, the president loves her.
The degree to which the president will listen to her is, in fact, what got her on chief of staff Kelly’s bad side in the first place. Within Trump’s inner circle, Manigault became especially notorious for frequently popping into the Oval Office and distracting and infuriating Trump with pieces of negative news coverage, celebrity gossip, and stories of palace intrigue. “When Gen. Kelly is talking about clamping down on access to the Oval, she’s patient zero,” a source close to the Trump administration said.
We don't doubt John Kelly and his "Nurse Ratched" deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, hate Omarosa. But is Omarosa really any more "Patient Zero" than literally every other member of the president's idiot staff -- the same idiot staff who call Kirstjen Nielsen "Nurse Ratched" in the first place for trying to curb their fun, louche, Oval Office clubhouse ways? (Notably, it was two women, Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who defended Nielsen in the Politico piece, with their names attached.)
In conclusion! Is Omarosa Manigault a self-aggrandizing asshole? PROBABLY! Does any man working in the West Wing with the possible exception of John Kelly have a leg to stand on regarding being so terribly verklempt that she is "plotting" against people, when that place is like the Vatican under the fucking Borgias? Oh, did she rejoice when Reince Priebus got fired? So did fucking all of them, dudes.
In conclusion more! If you wanna say some shit about Omarosa Manigault, or Nikki Haley, or, hell, Hillary Clinton, try not to be a whiny, delicate, fragile, MRA about it, dicks.
[ DailyBeast ]
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Horrible people saying horrible things about another horrible person. Just Tuesday at the White House.
I will always remember the moment I fell in love with Our Editrix: When she shocked the hell out of Jan Brewer on CNN by saying nice stuff to her (to her extreme surprise).