I always had a great connection with Melania and made a point of chatting with her whenever I saw her. A lot of people didn’t approach her at events because they found her beauty to be intimidating. She also projected an aura that said, Keep back two hundred feet! But I had no problem approaching her and asked my usual questions. “How are you? How’s the baby?” She lit up when she talked about Barron. He was our usual topic of conversation, and that day, the only topic. Melania always keeps things on the surface. We weren’t going to talk about art, religion, or philosophy at the Playboy Mansion anyway.
Directly opposite us, in full view, Donald posed for pictures with lingerie-clad women. Melania stared at her husband and the Bunnies while we chatted about their almost-one-year-old son. She didn’t flinch. She just stood there, stoically elegant. Her husband was in the middle of the action, while she watched and waited to go home to her son.
He had all the power, and she had none. That would change when she became First Lady. But when they were in the first years of their marriage, it was not what anyone would call an equal relationship. The fact that Melania had given him a child didn’t turn him into a doting husband. Trump’s first wife, Ivana, has said many times that he doesn’t relate to children and barely interacted with Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric until they were grown. He famously put young Ivanka on speakerphone when she called him during his business meetings. It’s a good metaphor for his parenting style: he phoned it in.
Don Jr. was at that party as well, and he seemed as delighted to be among sexy naked women as his father, despite the fact that his wife, Vanessa—who was pregnant with their first child—was also there, appearing to wish she were invisible. Don Jr. told Adam Carolla, who was broadcasting his radio show live from the party, “Can you believe the hell I’m going through? I’m at the Playboy Mansion with a pregnant wife! It doesn’t get worse than that, does it? Now, I love my wife, but that is rough. And I’m going to pay for these statements later on tonight. I’m gonna pay.” I can only hope he did.
I don’t remember seeing Eric Trump at this particular event. He might’ve been in Washington, DC, at Georgetown University. Ivanka was definitely there. I remember, at one point, pausing to take in the Trump family dynamic. Over there, Donald was flirting with Bunnies. Hovering nearby, Don Jr. kept a wary eye on his father, both in awe and terrified of him. Across the room, Melania stared at her husband, mysteriously, intensely. And Ivanka laughed and charmed anyone nearby. Donald never looked over at his son or his wife. But he glanced often at Ivanka.
Don Jr. and Ivanka were going to appear on the upcoming season of The Celebrity Apprentice as advisers and sit on either side of their father in the boardroom to evaluate our work on projects. At the time, Ivanka was twenty-six years old. She’d had one job at Forest City Enterprises before taking her place in the Trump Organization in 2005. Don Jr. was just shy of thirty and had only worked for his father’s company, apart from a stint as a bartender in Aspen.
To Trump, it didn’t matter that his children were not seasoned professionals. He prized loyalty over experience; Don Jr. and Ivanka were nothing if not devoted to their father. His children would never challenge his judgment or overshadow him as the show’s star.
• • •
THE CELEBRITY APPRENTICE started filming in late 2007. My TV persona was baked in by that point and I was an unscripted pro. I’d learned the secret formula to getting big ratings and making headline-grabbing, watercooler-worthy scenes. On the show every argument, every confrontation, every conflict I created was working to my benefit. I knew the producers were looking for dramatic tension from the cast. They needed it to save the show.
Some of that tension was sexual. One of the candidates was Tiffany Fallon, a Playmate, who was criticized and fired in the first episode—one that featured a cameo appearance by porn star Jenna Jameson—for not using sex enough to sell hot dogs on the street. In the boardroom, Donald said, “I’ve known a lot of Playmates of the year . . .” to which Tiffany Fallon responds, “I’m sure you have.”
Candidate Gene Simmons of KISS, a close friend of Donald’s, was the most disgusting misogynist I had ever met. On day one, he walked right up to another candidate, Carol Alt, a model and former Playboy cover girl, talked revoltingly about his famously elongated tongue, and then stuck it into her mouth. She gagged in front of me. When he started walking toward me with his tongue out, I ran. At one point, Simmons was taken off the men’s team and put with the women’s team, despite the fact that just about every one of the women on the show had complained to producers about his offensive behavior. As far as I could tell, they didn’t care. The producers loved it. Trump loved it, too.
I hadn’t been on the show for nearly three years, and during that time, the off-camera outtakes in the boardroom were still very revealing. During one long break, Gene and Donald engaged in language so profane, it would have raised eyebrows in prison. Donald asked Gene, “What do you think of Ivanka? How’s she doing?” What followed was a vile exchange, right in front of Ivanka, with Gene Simmons talking about her in a room full of people. While leering openly at her breasts, he said, “She’s a very, very sexy, desirable young woman who I’m looking forward to getting to know much better if you know what I mean, with all due respect.” Her father egged him on. Ivanka groaned dismissively and tried to get them to change subjects. I have to assume she’d been dealing with this her whole life and was used to it. Everyone else in the room was shocked, not by Gene’s language (we knew he was a disgusting pig), but by Donald’s obvious delight in hearing it. He had complete control of the boardroom. He could have shut it down at any point. But he didn’t.
Gene was a big star, and a star could say and do what he liked. Trump said so himself to Billy Bush on that infamous bus ride: that when you’re a star you can do what you want, you can grab them by the you-know-what. Gene’s decades of rock-star fame, and Trump’s decades as America’s gold-plated dealmaker, had normalized their sexist treatment to all women.
Including Trump’s own daughter.
For as long as I’d known Trump, I’d observed the way he hugs, touches, and kisses Ivanka; the way she calls him Daddy. In my opinion, based on my observations, their relationship goes up to the line of appropriate father/daughter behavior and jumps right over it. I believe he covets his daughter. It’s uncomfortable to watch them carry on, especially during that season of Celebrity Apprentice when she was so young. For her part, she knows she’s Daddy’s little girl, and I believe she exploits his fixation with her to get her way.
(Ivanka, by the way, has the worst potty mouth, which is such a contrast to her completely poised, sophisticated presentation.)
Don Jr. had to submit to his father’s hazing as well. If Donald didn’t like Don Jr.’s assessment in the boardroom, he’d berate him in front of everyone, using words like wrong and stupid. Don Jr. was clearly terrified of his father. People interpreted his fear as complete and total respect and deference. I did. But now, I see the verbal abuse as a method of control. He was rough on them, so they tried even harder to please him and avoid further abuse.
I remember during one boardroom outtake that season, it came out that Donald Trump and Carol Alt had once dated in the nineties. Donald said something like, “Yeah, those were the good old days.” He turned to Don Jr. and said, “You’ve got to get ass like that. You got to get some ass like that.” Carol just sat there, Ivanka-like, and took it. I remember being disgusted, thinking, Donald, what are you talking about? Your son is married. His wife is pregnant.
As we all know now, Don Jr. followed his father’s advice and example. In 2011, he had an alleged affair with Celebrity Apprentice candidate Aubrey O’Day. Aubrey and I knew each other in LA, so when she did the show, she called me to ask for advice. I next heard from her when she started seeing Don Jr. She told me, “He’s leaving his wife. They basically aren’t together anymore. They’re separated.”
I didn’t believe that. “Don Jr. is not leaving Vanessa,” I sai
d. Like father like son.
The next time I saw Aubrey at a diner in LA, she showed me very personal photos that Don Jr. had sent to her, and a long chain of dirty texts between them. If she hadn’t shown me those photos and texts, I wouldn’t have believed it. I filed their affair under “not my business,” a list that was growing longer every day, but my heart went out to Vanessa. She was popping out children and holding down the fort in New York while Don Jr. was allegedly running around the world, cheating on her with somebody from work.
• • •
MY SEASON OF The Celebrity Apprentice taped during October and November 2007 and aired in January through March 2008.
As you might recall, something else was going on during that time frame: From our first day of shooting, the country was in the throes of presidential election politics.
Leading up to the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire Democratic primaries in January 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had been slugging it out and would continue to for months to come.
During boardroom outtakes, Donald talked about Obama often. He hated him. He never explained why, but now I believe it was because Obama was black. At one point during the shooting, Donald said, “I’ve got to wrap up this boardroom because I’m going to be making a major announcement at a press conference.” He said that his investigators had discovered key information that would prove definitively that Barack Obama was not born in America.
As I mentioned, I’d first met Barack Obama in Chicago at a DNC fund-raiser in 2003 and knew he was a man to watch. I’d always kept my hand in Democratic politics, and I’d met Barack and Michelle Obama several times over the years and liked them both. So there I was, at my job and my boss was plotting to destroy a man I knew and respected deeply.
If your boss expressed political views that differed from yours, would you protest and quit your job? I reasoned that he had a right to his opinion, just as I had a right to mine. The difference was, he had unlimited cash and a big bullhorn, and if he could try to use them to keep Obama from getting the nomination of his party, he would.
I remember thinking to myself, Does he really have proof? By this time, Trump was known for these stunts so you could never be too sure. It was possible that he had unearthed some information that he thought the world needed to hear. But then, the press conference didn’t happen and his birther rhetoric died down and didn’t heat up again for another few years.
Let me be clear, we weren’t equals. Donald Trump was the star of the network. He controlled the conversation. We never talked politics at work or otherwise, so I had no notion of his party affiliation changing from Democrat until he started talking about Obama’s birth certificate.
Trump was accused of being racist toward Obama. His defenders said he was politically motivated, not racist. At that point, I had known Donald Trump for years and had never heard any accusations of racism against him prior to the birther issue.
In hindsight, I think it’s possible he decided that because he was being called a racist in the press, it behooved him to cultivate a closer relationship with me. It was to his benefit when we created The Ultimate Merger, a TV show with a black woman lead and a black cast, which would wind up airing on TV One, a black-owned network. Perhaps he worried that, after a rocky season on The Celebrity Apprentice, he was losing my devotion and that he hoped our new partnership on The Ultimate Merger would keep me as an upstanding member of the Trumpworld cult. Not only would I star in the show, but also I’d coproduce it with Trump. When he offered this to me, I didn’t take it lightly. Trump didn’t do anything he didn’t believe would be a success. He tapped me; it meant he believed in me, a sentiment that kept me as loyal to him as ever.
The Ultimate Merger was a dating show, an African American version of The Bachelorette with an Apprentice twist. Men would compete for my affections and I’d eliminate one each week. Included in the lineup of my twelve suitors were R & B singers Al B. Sure! and Ray Lavender, in addition to an attorney, a foreign currency trader, a former NFL player, and an author.
We were staying and shooting the show at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. During the course of production, we filmed a scene by the hotel’s swimming pool, and some furniture was damaged. It was not that big a deal, or so I thought. The next thing I know, I got a call from Trump in New York.
He said, “Omarosa, what the f**k is going on down there?” His tone was aggressive.
I said, “We’re shooting the show.”
“I heard from the manager that you’re out of control! You can’t just let those people do whatever the f**k they want! What’s the matter with them? They have no respect for my property. It’s my f**cking hotel! Show some f**king respect!”
I’d heard Trump use profanity many times, but never had he spoken like that to me. He was furious. I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Trump. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not, Omarosa. Or I’m going to come down there and straighten this shit out myself. You do not want that to happen, believe me.”
He hung up, and I remember the phone shaking in my hand. I hadn’t even been at the pool while that scene was shot. He should have unleashed his anger to the production team or the network. Screaming about “those people” and showing him the proper respect might have come off badly to the black TV execs. Trump couldn’t speak that way to people he didn’t know, or they would think he was unhinged. This was a type of behavior I would see again in the White House, which I came to call his “going nuclear” on someone.
When the show was projected to be a hit, Donald changed the name from The Ultimate Merger to Donald J. Trump Presents The Ultimate Merger. Putting his name on it didn’t seem like a great fit for an all-black TV network, but I didn’t say a word. It debuted in June 2010 and was a modest success. We thought we’d produce another season, and I’d continue my search for love on the show. But by then, I’d met and fallen madly in love with a wonderful man. I didn’t need to find love on a reality show. I had found it in real life.
Chapter Four
* * *
Shattered
Michael Clarke Duncan and I met at Whole Foods in Los Angeles in 2009. He came over to me and started talking. I recognized him immediately from his Oscar-nominated role in The Green Mile. He told me that he was an Apprentice fan and that he wanted to get to know me better. After I returned from a planned trip back east, we went on our first date.
After a few months of dating, we were madly in love and inseparable. In Michael, I found the love I’d been looking for my whole life with a man I respected and adored. But nothing in life is 100 percent perfect. Michael’s moods were unpredictable, and he had a temper. He was a huge man, six foot seven and three hundred pounds. Seeing a man that big in a rage was terrifying to watch.
He insisted that I move into his home in Woodland Hills, California, and he asked me to accompany him to movie locations. I would help him select movie projects, read scripts, and write synopses for him. Eventually, I was traveling with him as often as possible, which he preferred.
I decided that The Ultimate Merger would be my last reality TV show. I had been booking shows back-to-back-to-back for six or seven years by then and was ready to take a break. I shifted to doing more teaching and started doing missionary work. I visited an orphanage in West Africa and had a life-changing experience. I received my calling during that trip. In that one experience, I decided to change my life. When I got back to the States, I put everything on hold and enrolled in the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, to begin my degree in religious studies and to become an ordained minister. There was some pushback from people who didn’t think a reality star should be a minister. But I proved my commitment to service, faith, and my studies, and the doubters were silenced. The program required that I travel to Ohio from Los Angeles for about one week a month, the only times Michael and I were apart.
During this period of my life, I wasn’t in regular contact with Donald Trump. We did some press together to supp
ort The Ultimate Merger in 2010, when it finally premiered on TV One, but I wasn’t emotionally invested in its success. I’d moved on. There was a second season of the show starring model Toccara Jones, but I was not involved in the production of it. Trump and I discussed my starring in season two, which he preferred, but my life had taken a turn, and I wasn’t interested in reality TV anymore. I was focused on my studies, my faith, and my relationship.
Donald had also found a new passion in his life: the birther movement. The spark in his interest in Barack Obama’s nationality I’d seen back in 2007 had grown into a fire of discontent. He said in interviews for outlets like The View, Fox News, the Today show, “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” “I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country.” “If he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility, then he has pulled off one of the great cons in the history of politics.”
In June 2008, Obama’s campaign released a copy of his birth certificate, proving he’d been born at Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu. In March 2011, while contemplating a run for president, Donald said that he had “doubts” about the birth certificate. More than anyone else, he continued to carry the birther torch.
Barack Obama’s presidency incensed Donald Trump. In his mind, Obama wasn’t just black, he was foreign, with a father from Kenya. He was suspicious of Obama’s otherness, which is an actual term in the study of “whiteness.” The otherness wasn’t just being black; it was being African. Foreign. Exotic. Other. By Barack Obama becoming president, he made Donald Trump look like a fool. Trump took it personally, that the nation chose Obama over him, even though he wasn’t running.
Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House Page 6
