Omarosa Has Been ‘Triggering’ Trump to Tweet Stupid Things. Now Kelly Is ‘Pushing’ Her Out.
‘When Gen. Kelly Is Talking About Clamping Down on Access to the Oval, She’s Patient Zero’
Omarosa Manigault has been one of the most influential aides in the Trump White House and her unlimited access to the president is the reason he tweeted ugly and offensive personal attacks on MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, and Joe Scarborough this past June.Â
That is, until Trump made retired U.S. Marine Corps general John Kelly his Chief of Staff.
A report in The Daily Beast on Saturday says Gen. Kelly is “pushing out” Omarosa for “triggering” the president.
As has been widely reported, Trump literally had an open-door policy in the White House. Staffers and aides could walk in and get his attention, shaping and molding his views. General Kelly has ended that policy, and also stopped any and all “news” articles from reaching the president’s desk until they have been vetted.
The New York Times on Friday reported that Trump’s relationship with Kelly is strained, and the president is growing tired and resentful of being managed. Kelly is not so much managing Trump as managing what issues are allowed to influence Trump.
But he’s not a miracle worker.
“Mr. Kelly cannot stop Mr. Trump from binge-watching Fox News, which aides describe as the president’s primary source of information gathering,” the Times reports. “But Mr. Trump does not have a web browser on his phone, and does not use a laptop, so he was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets.”
Now Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were.
That’s good, since The Daily Caller and Breitbart are not the most reputable “news” sources.
Back to Omarosa.
She and Trump go way back. She first came to national attention on the very first season of Trump’s “The Apprentice,” back in 2004. She also appeared on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” Today, she is the Director Of Communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison.
The Daily Beast reports Saturday that Gen. Kelly “has taken steps to prevent her and other senior staffers from getting unvetted news articles on the president’s Resolute desk—a key method for influencing the president’s thinking, and one that Manigualt used to rile up Trump about internal White House drama.”
Manigault “was one of the worst offenders” of Trump’s now-dead open-door policy, sharing with the president articles that would “enrage” him.
“When Gen. Kelly is talking about clamping down on access to the Oval, she’s patient zero,†a source close to the Trump administration said.
“The stories Manigault would present to Trump, often on a phone or printed out, would often enrage the president, and resulted in him spending at least the rest of the day fuming about it,” The Daily Beast reports.
For example, one White House source noted that Manigault was one of the people who would bring to President Trump’s attention online articles concerning MSNBC hosts, and former Trump pals, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski “slagging him, and his administration.â€
This contributed, at least in small part, to the president’s mounting rage against the MSNBC couple, which exploded in late June when Trump attacked them and tweeted that, among other things, Brzezinski “was bleeding badly from a face-lift.â€
Omarosa exiting the White House would be a big win for America.
Some responses via Twitter:
Omarosa getting blocked from the Oval Office is the best news I’ve heard all morning. https://t.co/NINjOKI5LJ
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) September 2, 2017
Omarosa didn’t win The Apprentice. Now looks like she’s getting booted from White House island at Episode 9, again.https://t.co/xay9Y2BGpb
— Grant Stern (@grantstern) September 2, 2017
Amazing that one of the top officials in government has to be concerned about what Omarosa is telling the president https://t.co/ogQDyw0GIo
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) September 2, 2017
Omarosa is unqualified and reckless, just like her boss. Neither of them has any business being in the @WhiteHouse. https://t.co/7e4vXyY2mT
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) September 2, 2017
Imagine showing this headline to someone in 2004 as they watched Omarosa and Trump on the Apprentice. https://t.co/yx7FK3oYLB
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) September 2, 2017
Who could have imagined that Omarosa might make it harder for a team to function smoothly? https://t.co/OuQSvmpnKQ
— Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) September 2, 2017
Retired four-star Marine general John Kelly wonders how his life became a mediocre Onion headline https://t.co/JtsatbuyYl via @thedailybeast
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) September 2, 2017
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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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