On Sunday, Omarosa Manigault Newman appeared on MSNBC’ “Politics Nation” and told host Al Sharpton that she believes President Trump wants to “start a race war.”
Manigault Newman has been making the rounds to promote her new book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” in which she makes numerous claims about what went on at the White House during her tenure as Office of the Public Liaison director of communications.
Here’s her exchange with Sharpton:
SHARPTON: Let me ask this. In terms of diversity in the White House, I’ve been in this as you know a long time, [in] civil rights, I can’t think of a president, even [a] Republican, from Nixon on that didn’t have a black in the West Wing in at least the discussions, in the senior administrative leadership until now. You were the most public face there, and even there, they didn’t want you in a lot of the meetings that you insisted to be in as I read the book.
MANIGAULT NEWMAN: That’s right.
SHARPTON: He’s the first president that has outright excluded – he can call me and other activists racist all he wants — he’s the only one with a lily white inner circle. Am I right?
MANIGAULT NEWMAN: You’re absolutely correct — and it’s much much worse than people even realize. There’s 30 assistants to the president right now. There are none representing the African-American community. There are SESs as well as Schedule Cs that make up the bulk of the appointments to each of the agencies, and the diversity in the agency is very sparse, and, in fact, when we submitted candidates, they were rejected over and over again. And I will tell you that they haven’t even made an attempt to replace anyone in OPL to do the African-American outreach; they just kind of detailed a guy over for just three months, I think to do a little window dressing, but there is really no real commitment to diversity in the White House.
And he’s unapologetic about it because he’s completely contradicted the commitment he made when he did that campaign of “what do you have to lose?” Well, clearly we have to lose a voice, an advocate, someone who understands the issues and knows how to reach out to [the] community. We have a lot to lose, and in fact, we’re losing right now because Donald Trump is disingenuous about his engagement and his outreach, and in fact, I believe he wants to start a race war in this country.