Donald Trump may need a straitjacket before the night is over
It’s inching closer to midnight on the east coast, and Donald Trump is still going on and on (and on) about his former longtime friend Omarosa, who has now become one of his biggest enemies. There’s a lesson in there about the dangers of hiring a vicious sociopath to do your deranged bidding, and then firing that person. It’s clearly not a lesson that Trump has learned, considering the number of former hired thugs who are now trying to destroy him. But as the night goes on, it’s clear that Trump does understand that he’s in trouble.
The two recordings released by Omarosa are both damaging to Donald Trump. The first one reveals that his Chief of Staff John Kelly is running the White House like a bad episode of Romper Room. The second one reveals that Trump is either unwilling to take responsibility for the major firings he’s signed off on, or he’s completely clueless about these firings. Neither tape is a bodyblow to Trump. However, he’s sure intent on giving away tonight that he thinks Omarosa has far worse tapes.
Donald Trump is now (probably falsely) claiming that Apprentice producer Mark Burnett just called him to assure him that there are no tapes of Trump using the N-word. Trump is also ranting about how that word is supposedly not in his vocabulary, which no reasonable person believes, considering how blatantly racist his words and policies are in general. It doesn’t sound like Omarosa has an N-word tape of Trump. So why is Trump so worried about what Omarosa does have?
For one thing, Donald Trump knows the kinds of things he’s said in Omarosa’s presence, and he now has to worry about how much of it she might have been secretly recording. In addition, whatever you think of Omarosa, she’s proven that she’s skilled at working a news cycle. She knows that the best way to get the maximum publicity for her book is to stretch this controversy over several news cycles – and that requires releasing increasingly damaging tapes as the days go on. These two tapes probably just scratch the surface of what she’s sitting on.
