Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien has a good opinion piece in Bloomberg about the Omarosa story that is currently dominating the news cycle. O’Brien calls Omarosa and Trump “kindred spirits” and that while he was interviewing Trump for his book “Trumpland” he seemed to be endlessly fascinated by Omarosa, particularly her “self-absorption and nastiness”.
Of the barrage of daily news stories regarding this administration it’s difficult to choose which ones to stay focused on and a lot the time events that seem to not have much merit surprisingly turn into important stories. At first glance everything about Omarosa’s story seems to be something that could and should be ignored, until it’s not of course. Thinking like that is entirely missing the point. The Omarosa story is the new Stormy Daniels story or Michael Cohen or the endless other ones that are demanding our attention by their sheer absurdity. O’Brien theorizes that “Trump tweets relentlessly when he feels cornered or obsessed” and by all accounts Trump is definitely obsessed with Omarosa. Trump refuted Omarosa’s claim that he used the n-word during a taping of “The Apprentice” and said that Mark Burnett called to tell him the tapes she alludes to don’t exist. Then a day later Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she can’t guarantee Trump didn’t say it. Omarosa said that the Apprentice tape was discussed during the 2016 campaign on a call but his aides denied that ever took place. The next day Omarosa released a recording of that meeting causing Trump’s aides to walk back their original statements. Frank Bruni writes that Omarosa’s tapes reflect Trump’s long history of recording or threatening to record conversations, “Imitation isn’t just the sincerest form of flattery. It’s the cleverest kind of revenge.” Politico reports that there are some similarities between the fear of Trump’s staff worried about what will come out in subsequent recordings to the fears Hillary Clinton’s staff had during the Wikileaks daily release of John Podesta’s emails. A key difference was spelled out by Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s former communications director, “Nobody had to be worried that there was an email where Hillary used the N-word.”
Time will tell how long this story will dominate the news cycle and whether it actually does anything to impact change. That people are yet again openly wondering what Trump’s views are on race and how it is that he has such a terrible track record of hiring people like Omarosa in the first place is a dialogue worth continuing to have.
Stokey Scribe 