Who do you believe when everyone is a proven liar?
That’s exactly the prospect facing Americans asked to choose between Donald Trump, Omarosa Manigault, and members of the mainstream media. Trump, of course, fibs routinely, on matters both great and small. Omarosa has been wildly reviled as a liar—she was fired twice from the Clinton White House, three times on The Apprentice, and once more from the Trump White House. And the members of the media, who purport to tell us the truth in objective fashion, are now dutifully parroting every allegation from Omarosa—a woman who, just a few months ago, was directing her diatribes at the members of Celebrity Big Brother (which could now be graced with the presence of another stellar moral exemplar, Stormy Daniels).
At that point, she suddenly benefited from that oft-invoked Strange New Respect™—the phenomenon that occurs the minute that any purported Republican turns on his or her former colleagues. We’ve already seen such Strange New Respect™ accrue to characters ranging from Michael Cohen to Jeff Flake.
Omarosa is no exception. This week, the same members of the media who called her a pathological liar suddenly decided that she was Patient Zero in the Trump racism outbreak. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who spent much of the Republican primary season pumping Trump up with free airtime, now suggests that Trump terming Omarosa a “dog”—a term Trump has used routinely for years, on figures including Hosni Mubarak and Kristen Stewart—could bring about “genocide” (yes, seriously). Democrats far and wide declared Trump’s use of the “dog” terminology racist, even though Trump has dropped it on white people with alacrity.