Omarosa: 'President Trump Used the N-Word'; Everyone Else: 'No Sh*t'

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 10, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 10, 2018 |

As several outlets are reporting today, reality star turned White House aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman, claims that President Trump frequently used the n-word while he was the host of Celebrity Apprentice and that there are tapes to prove it. From the NYTimes:

In her book, Ms. Manigault Newman suggested she now believes she was pushed out because she was close to getting hold of the secret tapes revealing Mr. Trump using the racist word.

She also wrote that she has been investigating the existence of tapes that prove Mr. Trump used the word since late 2016.

“By that point, three sources in three separate conversations had described the contents of this tape,” she said. “They all told me that President Trump hadn’t just dropped a single N-word bomb. He’d said it multiple times throughout the show’s taping during off-camera outtakes, particularly during the first season of ‘The Apprentice.’”

I wish that this story meant more than a blip in the news cycle during a slow news week, but it won’t. Not unless we actually hear the tapes (which Tom Arnold also claims to have seen). Those tapes, however, are locked away by producer Mark Burnett, who helped plan Trump’s inauguration.

Those tapes will never see the light of day.

And I know what you’re all saying: Even if they do surface, it won’t matter. Trump’s supporters (and everyone else) already knows that Trump is racist. We all know that he probably uses the N-word. If anything, it would endear him more to his base.

Maybe. But probably, it would just create another Access Hollywood situation, which didn’t seem to hurt Trump.

But, it did create a lot of hell for other Republicans, and going into the midterms, it would put every Republican on the defensive even more than they are now. Imagine the media firestorm if there were actual tapes proving what we already know. Imagine every Republican running for Congress being put in the untenable position of either defending the President’s use of a racial slur or distancing themselves from Trump, which itself would alienate them from many of their own voters. Imagine Dean Heller — in a very close race in Nevada — spending three weeks answering questions about Trump’s racism instead of promoting himself. Or Josh Hawley in Missouri. Or Troy Balderson, in the Ohio 12th who may have just won his special election by less than a percentage point and who has to run against Danny O’Connor again in November.

Racism matters. Maybe not to Trump supporters, who decry “demographic changes” that the country “did not vote for,” but to an awful lot of Republicans in tight Congressional races around the country forced to take a position on Trump’s racist statements. Support the President and lose a lot of independent votes, or denounce the President and lose a lot of Trump supporters, and in a lot of races that will be determined by one or two percentage points, that matters.

Unfortunately, until Omarosa can produce the tapes, it won’t matter. It’ll be her word against his, and to be honest, neither person has much of a reputation for honesty (not that most people don’t believe Omarosa, but they’re still plenty of wiggle room for plausible deniability).

All this book does is reinforce what we all already knew. Trump is a racist.

yeah, no shit.