President Donald Trump called former White House aide and “The Apprentice” star Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” in a Tuesday morning tweet praising Chief of Staff John Kelly for firing her late last year.
“When you give a crazy, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out,” Trump wrote. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
Update 3:15 p.m. EDT Aug. 14: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed criticism of the president's tweet calling Manigault Newman a "dog" Tuesday, telling reporters that he was simply "voicing his frustration with the fact that this person has shown a complete lack of integrity."
She accused Manigault Newman of “trying to tear this entire place down.”
“This has absolutely nothing to do with race,” she said. “The president’s an equal opportunity person that calls things as they see them.”
Huckabee Sanders declined to say whether she or any other White House employees had signed non-disclosure agreements.
Original report: The tweet came after Manigault Newman released audio recordings that she says were made during her time in the White House. In one clip, the president can be heard telling Manigault Newman that he was never told of her firing ahead of time.
"Nobody even told me about it. You know they run a big operation, but I didn't know it," a man, purportedly Trump, says in the recording. "I don't love you leaving at all."
>> Listen to the clip here (WARNING: Audio includes strong language.)
Manigault Newman also released a recording allegedly made while Kelly was informing her of her dismissal in December.
"It's come to my attention over the last few months that there's been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues," a man, purportedly Kelly, can be heard saying in the recording. "I think it's important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure ... you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation, and then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation."
Newman told "Meet the Press" that she believed the latter was a threat.
"He goes on to say that 'things can get ugly for you,'" said Newman, whose book, "Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House," hit stores Tuesday. "The chief of staff of the United States, under the direction of the president of the United States, threatening me on damage to my reputation and things getting ugly for me – that's downright criminal."
Manigault Newman also says she has heard audio tape of Trump using the N-word, a claim the president denies.
“I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have,” Trump wrote Monday night in a tweet. “She made it up.”
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