In the 1942 movie classic Casablanca there is a scene in which Captain Renault, the unabashedly corrupt police commander, walks into Rick’s Café to find that there is gambling going on. As the croupier hands Renault his winning, Renault says, “I’m shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here!”
That’s equivalent to what Omarosa Manigualt Newman says in her newly released tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House. After a 15-year relationship with Trump and his organization, she is shocked at what she now describes as racist and despicable conduct by a man she once defended but now finds unfit for office.
More of a biography than expose, Unhinged tells the story of Omarosa’s rise from humble beginnings in public housing in Youngstown, Ohio to fame and fortune. Sadly, her father was murdered when she was seven and her mother struggled to keep her family together and food on the table. But Omarosa was an achiever. She used her athletic ability to get a volleyball scholarship to Central State University where she studied journalism and communications and went on to Howard University to obtain a masters and began working toward a doctorate.
Originally a Democrat, she worked in the office of Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. But she didn’t win friends and influence people. Her former supervisors are quoted as saying that she “was the worst hire we ever made” and that she was “unqualified and disruptive.”
She worked in the Hillary Clinton campaign until she had a disagreement with campaign staff when she transitioned from the “Ready for Hillary” to the “Hillary for America” campaign. When approached by the Trump campaign, her loyalty to her the Democratic party was expendable.
First the Director of African-American Outreach for the Trump presidential campaign, after the election she became Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison. In her year at the White House she sat by the door on the fringe of Trump’s lily-white cabinet and staff and spent most of her time doing damage control for Trump. The chapter in her book entitled “Tackled by My Teammates” tells of her difficulty in working with the Trump White House staffers.
Omarosa came to the attention of the public in 2004 as a participant in the first season of The Apprentice where she became the “the woman America loved to hate.” Since I have never watched an episode, I have no opinion as to how good or bad she was as a reality TV star. But she proudly tells how she used every dog-eat-dog tactic that she could muster — many of which she learned from Trump — to succeed on the show. Her tactics paid off. It was her gateway to Trumpworld and her current estimated fortune which is, according to Celebrity Net Worth, $3.5 million dollars.
For those readers who were looking forward to curling up with a good book and finding out all of the dirt on the Trump White House, Unhinged will probably not fit the bill. Most of the anecdotes have already been revealed, discussed and digested on CNN, MSNBC and social media. But with the tapes and videos that she claims to have that back up her allegations, one wonders if Omarosa may be the Trojan horse that Trump unwittingly invited into the White House — tape recorder and all — who turns out to be his Achilles heel.
She attributes her years of survival in Trumpworld and the year in the toxic atmosphere of the Trump White House to a personal blind spot — a reference that she makes numerous times. According to her, this blind spot kept her from seeing the real Donald Trump. Maybe that blind spot was more akin to a blindfold that kept her from seeing that she was being played like a drum while at the same time tone-deaf to the attacks on her defense of Trump that made her one of most reviled figures in the African American community.
Can anyone really believe that she drank the Kool-Aid Trump dished out when he told her that he was unaware of her firing? His comments were as credible as the slave master who consoles the slave that is being sold down the river — gee, I didn’t know. It wasn’t my decision — as he signs the bill of sale to Simon Legree.
Interestingly, Omarosa gives few details as to any personal relationship she had with Trump. While most Americans believe that they were more than friends, she insists their relationship was strictly professional and platonic. She talks at length about her active social life which included many male companions, including her engagement to Michael Clark Duncan, made famous for his role in The Green Mile.
She fails to mention that when Duncan died, he left a substantial portion of his estate to her, a fact that did not sit well with his family. They maintain that she unduly influenced the actor as he lay on his deathbed.
When planning her April 2017 wedding to Jacksonville, Florida, pastor John Allen Newman, plans to have the wedding in Jacksonville suddenly had to be changed, although the exact reason is not revealed. Fortunately, she was able to arrange for the wedding to be held at Trump International in Washington, D.C., although the president was unable to attend. Ever the reality star, Omarosa received $25,000 from Say Yes to the Dress to help finance the event, something that she does not mention but was revealed on a White House financial disclosure form. She also failed to mention that she got national press after she brought 39 members of her wedding party to the White House to take pictures — something that flew in the face of White House protocol. To her chagrin, the White House prevented her from sharing on social media.
A few of the tidbits she reveals include the allegation that Trump seriously considered being sworn in with his hand on his book The Art of the Deal rather than a Bible. She has nothing good to say about White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway — birds of a feather — and describes General John Kelly in Darth Vader-esq terms. Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and allegations of Trump’s sexual infidelities are conspicuous in their absence.
In a particularly insightful chapter entitled “I Think the President Is Losing It,” she gives seemingly credible examples of what she says is the state of Trump’s deteriorating physical and mental health. Maybe I liked the chapter because it verifies what I already believe.
Omarosa’s definition of loyalty is on a par to that of Casablanca’s Captain Renault. “I have no conviction… I blow with the wind.” It’s a message that comes across loud and clear in the book that is hardly worth the $18 I shelled out.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she serves on the Board of the Ohio History Connection, is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission and treasurer of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.