Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House

by Omarosa Manigault Newman

  Back to that awkward drinking moment in the map room: as soon as the event was over, Dr. Ronny Jackson approached the president. We were departing the room. I don’t know what happened after I left, but to my untrained eye, it looked like Trump had had a small episode of some kind.

  I believe that Donald Trump is physically ill. His terrible health habits have caught up with him. His refusal to exercise (except golf). His addiction to Big Macs and fried chicken. His daily tanning bed sessions (he prefers to do it in the morning, so he “looks good” all day). Donald might brag about his superior genes, but even they can’t stand up to what he puts his body through.

  He is clearly obese. During the first season of The Apprentice, he was tall and svelte. In the ensuing seasons, Donald expanded slowly but surely. In 2007, he didn’t have a belly yet or the jowl. By 2012, he’d probably put on thirty pounds eating a junk-food-only diet. His preference for steak well done with ketchup has offended many chefs all over the world. The world has yet to learn about the extent of Donald Trump’s Diet Coke habit. He always had one in his hand, as far back as I’ve known him. He’s up to eight cans a day, at least. Eight cans a day, for the last fifteen years, is 43,800 cans of Diet Coke, poured into his system.

  In the White House, he just pushes a button in a wooden box on his desk. He can summon anything with that button. Whenever I went in to brief him, he’d push the button and get us Diet Cokes.

  When I started to have grave concerns for his mental health, I connected the dots to his physical health and poor choices, specifically, his soda habit.

  I researched it, and found a brand-new study by a team of neurologists from Boston University that linked Diet Coke consumption with dementia and increased risk of stroke.

  Dementia. Not being able to remember anything, confusion, loss of vocabulary and ability to process information. Stroke. Those awkward shaking hands, struggling to bring a bottle of water to his mouth . . .

  I printed out the study and put it in his stack. He never read it. Rob Porter did, and he gave me a warning. After a senior staff meeting, he said, “Stop putting articles in the president’s folder. You have to go through me first. Don’t do it again.”

  It was just like the time I had tried to talk to people at the White House about his cognitive issues. No one wanted to hear it, let alone document it. If Dr. Jackson knew what was really going on with Trump’s brain and body, he did not disclose it to anyone. In January he announced that the president was in excellent health, and had excellent genes, an echo of what Trump always said about himself. His loyalty was rewarded when Donald nominated him for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, but that didn’t work out. He was accused of being an unstable man who treated underlings poorly, abused alcohol, once crashed a car while drunk, banged on the hotel room door of a female colleague while drunk, and doled out prescription medications so freely he was called “Candyman.”

  Staff Secretary Rob Porter was another man whom Trump valued, who kept his secrets and had a very dark side.

  I found Rob to be very buttoned-up, very rigid, but there was something about him that gave me pause. There was a weird look in his eyes. He was just not the kind of man with whom you would want to be alone in an elevator. And yet, women on the staff liked him, such as Hope Hicks, his girlfriend at that time.

  I didn’t challenge Porter about the study, and I steered clear of him.

  Trumpworld was overpopulated with questionable men. Trump endorsed Roy Moore, a man who was accused by several women of sexual misconduct, some when they were underage. I found Trump’s endorsement despicable. It was disgusting. And there was more than his alleged treatment of women. During a campaign speech, he referred to Asians as “yellows” and Native Americans as “reds.” He’d compared the Koran to Mein Kampf and said that Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, should not be permitted to serve his country. There was simply no way that Donald really wanted a person like this to be a United States senator! And yet, he supported him. January 20 could not come fast enough. I had to get out.

  After Charlottesville, we needed some feel-good events. One of the ones that my office, OPL, helped to set up was a November 27 meeting to honor Navajo code talkers, veterans who’d aided the U.S. Marines to send coded messages during World War I and II. As John McCain tweeted, “[Their] bravery, skill & tenacity helped secure our decisive victory over tyranny & oppression.”

  Donald spoke to the three code talkers, all of them elderly gentlemen, in the Oval. Unfortunately, the podium was right in front of a portrait of slave owner Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, a Trump favorite, who had signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 that led to mass migration of native people along the Trail of Tears, where thousands of Cherokee died.

  That was one unfortunate oversight.

  Another unfortunate moment was during Trump’s praising of these proud men. He said, “I just want to thank you because you’re very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who was here a long time . . . longer than you. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’ ”

  Another unforced error. Another example of being tackled by your own team.

  I was shocked. First of all, what did Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have to do with the event? Why bring her up at all? Why use a racial slur about Native Americans at a ceremony to honor Native Americans? It was unconscionable.

  We had another one of our frustrating conversations immediately after that event.

  I said, “Mr. President, you insulted those men. We were trying to honor them!”

  He said, “I didn’t insult them. I insulted Elizabeth Warren.”

  He couldn’t make the leap, that evoking Pocahontas to belittle Warren was, in effect, insulting to native people as a whole because of Trump’s intention of his usage. In my opinion, Trump didn’t care that he offended those men or anyone. He thought he’d gotten in a good jab at Elizabeth Warren.

  The next day, Eric Trump whataboutismed like an Olympic champion, tweeting, “The irony of an ABC reporter (whose parent company Disney has profited nearly half a billion dollars on the movie ‘Pocahontas’) inferring that the name is ‘offensive’ is truly staggering to me.” The real, pressing issue wasn’t that Donald insulted American heroes to their face in a White House that struggled with race. To Eric, it was that Disney made an animated film twenty-two years ago.

  That tweet was beneath Eric. But to stay in the cult, followers, including Trump’s children, had to compromise their own integrity to defend Donald.

  I really had to get out of there.

  It was announced in late November that Kellyanne would be the new point person on the opioid crisis. The national public health emergency fund earmarked for the crisis had shrunk to sixty thousand dollars at the same time Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department pledged twelve million dollars to help prosecute drug crimes via state and local law enforcement. Kellyanne was an unusual choice for this role, since she lacked any experience or expertise in public health, drug policy, or law enforcement. Back in October, she “yessed” Trump and Sessions’s view that the solution to the crisis was prevention, telling Fox News, “The best way to stop people from dying from overdoses and drug abuse is by not starting in the first place. That’s a big core message for our youth.” Prevention was a necessary part of any drug policy, but what about the two million people who misuse prescription pain killers, and almost six hundred thousand heroin addicts already on our streets? Was Sessions-style “round ’em up” prosecution the best strategy? I wasn’t so sure about that.

  Immediately, I set up a meeting with her for myself and the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams. We walked in, sat down, and said, “Dr. Adams and I wanted to talk to you about the impact of opioids on diverse communities.”

  Dr. Adams, an anesthesiologist and African American, spoke for a bit about addiction and the proliferation of opioids in African Americans.

  I mentioned that, during the crack epidemic in
the ’90s, there was no compassionate approach to treating addiction in the inner cities. Opioids were seen as a white, suburban, and rural problem, and resources for prevention and treatment were available. “It’s a major cause of death and suffering in the inner cities, too. We need to allocate resources to the minority communities, as well,” I said, and presented my briefing folder with stats. Dr. Adams outlined what his prescription would be.

  Kellyanne listened politely, but I could tell our passionate plea didn’t sway her.

  “I will look into all of this and get back to you,” she said to appease us.

  To this day, there has been little to no effort made to allocate opioid crisis resources to African American communities. Kellyanne’s opioid “cabinet”—which is full of political appointees—was called a “sham” by drug policy expert Congressman Patrick Kennedy in January 2018.

  On December 5, Corey Lewandowski’s book, Let Trump Be Trump, coauthored with David Bossie, came out. In an early chapter, he described how Hope Hicks would steam-press Donald’s trousers while he was still wearing them. Hope was furious. It portrayed her in a servile demeaning light. It might have been a bit of revenge on Corey’s part for Hope’s ending their relationship to move on to a law enforcement officer. When that romance fizzled, she got involved with Rob Porter. (Incidentally, Hope was not the only female assistant to the president to have White House flings. Another highly visible assistant to the president might still be carrying on her affair right now.)

  A couple of months later came the press reports of allegations that Rob Porter abused both his exes (and a third woman, a 2016 girlfriend). The ex-wives told the FBI about Porter’s abuse during his security clearance, but nothing happened. He was appointed to the White House as a staff secretary to Trump anyway. For months, General Kelly kept this secret.

  Incidentally, when this all came out about Porter, General Kelly didn’t want him to leave. The chief of staff had known for months about Porter’s history with domestic abuse but didn’t seem to mind. The day of Rob’s resignation, Kelly said, “Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidant, and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.” So, in spite of everything that came out, Rob Porter had integrity. Kelly would later rake me over the coals about so-called “integrity issues.” He has a very interesting understanding of the meaning of “integrity.”

  Donald called Porter’s exit “very sad” and defended him by saying that Porter claimed he was innocent.

  • • •

  THROUGHOUT THE FALL, with all this insanity going on around me, I was miserable at the White House. Morale was at an all-time low, and the environment was toxic. I realized that Donald Trump was the biggest distraction to his own presidency. Donald Trump, the individual, the person, because of who he is and what he stands for and how he operates, would always be the biggest hindrance for us. Donald Trump, who would attack civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would go after grieving black widows, who would say there were good people on both sides, who endorsed an accused child molester; Donald Trump, and his decisions and his behavior, was harming the country. I could no longer be a part of this madness.

  So, on that wintry day in December 2017, days before Christmas, what General Kelly did when he summoned me into the Situation Room—although morally bankrupt, factually wrong, and downright slimy—had a silver lining. As he executed his plan to expedite my departure from the White House that Tuesday evening, it was as if a hypnotist’s assistant had snapped his fingers and the hypnosis was now over.

  For the first time in nearly fifteen years, I would be free from the cult of Trumpworld.

  The day after I left, I received a call from the president.

  He said, “What’s going on. I just saw on the news you’re thinking about leaving. What happened?”

  Did he not know I’d already left?

  “General Kelly said you guys wanted me to leave,” I said.

  “No! No one even told me. I didn’t know that. Damn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.” He started rambling. “It’s a big operation, to tell you the truth.”

  He talked a little more and then said he would call me back once he spoke to Kelly. He apparently wanted to get to the bottom of this mishap.

  We hung up, and I tried to make sense of that conversation.

  Either he did know, and he was lying to me and playing me, proving his loyalty oath was completely one-sided, or he didn’t know Kelly intended to threaten me, lock me in the Situation Room, and tell me he didn’t want things to get “ugly” for me. Had he ceded all control of the White House to the general? If that were true, then Trump was powerless and that was alarming.

  During the call, I heard real sadness in his voice. He seemed devastated that I was gone. He was unhappy Keith Schiller was gone. His two old friends, separated from him. In his voice, I could hear that he really did care about me. But it wasn’t enough.

  Ivanka and Jared called me next. She said, “I know my father spoke to you. He put out a nice tweet. I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”

  “I’m hanging in there.”

  Ivanka said, “We’ve been thinking about you.”

  Jared added, “As we’ve learned, it’s a brutal business.”

  “The reports of my exit have been insane,” I replied.

  He said, “We’re here, and whatever you’re thinking of doing next, if we can help you in any way . . .”

  “Omarosa, we’re here for you always,” said Ivanka. “We really love you, and if we can help in any way.”

  “One hundred percent,” said Jared. “Take care. Call us anytime, for anything.”

  And then, finally, I heard from Lara and Eric. During this call, Lara expressed love and concern from the whole family—“You know how much we love you, how much DJT loves you”—and offered me a position in the reelection campaign, as I’ve mentioned earlier.

  I stalled. I had no intention of joining, but I wanted to see what they’d send me.

  Lara and I discussed my plans for the holidays and when we could finalize. I told her that I’d be going to Florida for Christmas, and we could talk after that.

  “I read that New York Times article,” she blurted. She was referring to the article I mentioned back in the Introduction, the one by Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman that said I had “a story to tell.” I hadn’t seen it; I was busy recovering from foot surgery and the media attacks, and was fielding a number of offers from television, radio, and print.

  I said, “What article?”

  “It was on the front page, the one they wrote about you. That’s not something to tell people about. If you come on board, we can’t have you talking about that stuff . . . everything is positive, right? Why don’t we chat on Monday?”

  That’s not something to tell people about . . . We can’t have you talking about stuff . . .

  Did she mean nearly fifteen years of Donald Trump’s crazy antics that I had witnessed? Because there was a lot.

  Within twenty-four hours, Lara sent me a contract to work on the 2020 campaign for $15,000 per month, the same salary that I’d received at the White House. The NDA attached to the email was as harsh and restrictive as any I’d seen in all my years of television. It said that I was forbidden from ever talking about the entire Trump family or the entire Pence family, to anyone in the universe, for all of eternity.

  I declined the offer. I was done with Trumpworld.

  However, they were not done yet with me. Two days later, I got a flurry of letters from attorneys representing the president of the United States imploring me to stay silent about Trump, or else.

  • • •

  FOR MONTHS AFTER my departure, I could not reach my sources about the N-word tape. And then, after I returned from my stint in Hollywood I called one of them out of the blue.

  Incredibly, this person—who shall remain nameless—picked up the phone.

 
; We spoke.

  On this phone conversation, I was told exactly what Donald Trump said—yes, the N-word and others in a classic Trump-goes-nuclear rant—and when he’d said them.

  During production he was miked, and there is definitely an audio track.

  For over a year I’d been so afraid of hearing the specifics from someone who’d been in the room. Hearing the truth freed me from that fear. And only now that it’s gone, do I realize just how heavy it’s been.

  * * *

  Epilogue

  * * *

  During the telecast of the sixtieth annual Grammy Awards on CBS, I was announced as the surprise cast member of the special edition of Celebrity Big Brother. News of my appearance on the show went nationwide, trended on social media, and was all the talk of Washington, DC.

  My decision to join the cast was simple. I wanted to get as far away from Washington and that traumatic incident in the Situation Room as I could get. The idea of being sequestered away from the world would seem daunting to most celebrities. It sounded like music to my ears. No phones, no TV, no Internet for thirty days. It sounded like just the detox I needed after spending nearly two and half years on the campaign and then the transition and time in the White House with Donald Trump. I needed a total Trump detox, and Celebrity Big Brother offered that unique opportunity.

  During the show I got to live in total luxury and hang out with fellow celebs and just relax for a change. With my guard down, I said some things that made headlines. I wasn’t aware of their effect until I got out. Some of my comments were: