Trump Admits He Tried to 'Rehabilitate' Omarosa's Reputation, Fired 'Apprentice' Star Because People 'Hated' Her
June 17 2024, Published 2:00 p.m. ET
Former president Donald Trump has claimed that he hired Omarosa to the White House as an "experiment" but eventually had to fire her because the former Apprentice star was "late all the time" and everybody "hated her," RadarOnline.com has learned.
Omarosa appeared on three seasons of Trump's NBC reality series The Apprentice before becoming his campaign's director of African American outreach in 2016. The following year, she was appointed assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison — and then axed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in December.
"I saw her very little in the White House. The White House is a very big place! It's buildings, actually. But the people hated her in Washington," Trump told Variety's Ramin Setoodeh in his new book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, The Daily Mail reports.
"Her personality — she was late all the time. She wouldn't show up," the ex-president continued. "Look, I tried to rehabilitate her reputation as an experiment. And when I did, I said, 'This probably won't work out but let's see what happens.' And I also said... 'When she gets fired, you always have to pay a price.' It's too bad. In the White House, she didn't cut the mustard."
Omarosa, who previously had worked in the White House under President Bill Clinton, was a contestant on the first season of The Apprentice. "Omarosa was a major hit in her first year," Trump said. "Her anger, her craziness, it just worked so incredibly well. She was a great television personality the first time. And then I put her on a second time, and she bombed."
"The first time she was evil," Trump explained of her role on the show. "The second time, she tried to be evil. And the third time, she tried even harder. And when you try, it doesn't work. Does that make sense?"
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"And then I helped her get a job at the White House because she was begging me to help restore her. So I figured, why not? I put her in," Trump revealed. "I told people when we hired her, I said, 'When we fire her, we'll have nothing but trouble.' But that's OK. That's the way life goes."
"A lot of things I do in life, I do as an experiment," he added. "I mean, I do it out of human interest — just to see who's loyal, who's not loyal. She was actually really great to me, until she left. And then after she left, she got a book deal, and she made some money. They could all do that. But they are scumbags when they do."
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After her departure, Omarosa criticized Trump and his administration in her 2018 tell-all Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House.
"They don't pay, I guess, if you say nice things," Trump said. "I hear she lost that money. I don't know — something happened. She had the whole thing with the husband too. And the family. It was always drama."