Omarosa Manigault-Newman once claimed: “I’m a moving target. As soon as they think they’ve figured Omarosa out, I’ve already moved on to a whole different industry.”
With respect to Omarosa’s career, though, has she really shifted industries that often? She’s best known for two things, professionally. The first is being fired from government jobs; the second is making Penny from Good Times’ mama look like a sympathetic figure by comparison with her television persona, which is parked at the intersection of Cruella de Vil and vacation Bible school.
However, based on her not-so-riveting performance thus far on Celebrity Big Brother, there is something slightly new about Omarosa worth acknowledging: she’s purposely avoiding her typical role of villain. For years, Omarosa has thrived being the person who acts as if every interview and every scene warrants her rubbing her face with Vaseline, ready for to fight at a moment’s notice. Suddenly, it looks like she’s trying to rebrand herself.
Understanding that for many, many Black folks, there is no coming back from attaching one’s ass to an even bigger one in Donald Trump, the racist, sexist, xenophobic bigot who helped promote the birther conspiracy against the first Black president (among other many sins), perhaps that is why Omarosa is sitting on television offering some revisionist history as to why she supported him.
As many of us have since witnessed in the widely shared clip, a tearful Omarosa declared, “I was haunted by tweets every single day, like what is he going to tweet next?” She went on to claim that she was “attacked” for trying to coerce Honeysuckle Lenin into less controversial tweeting, only to end up being denied access by “all of the people around him.”
Let her tell it, Omarosa knew the situation inside the White House was “bad” and thinks everyone should know that “it’s going to not be OK.” You see, she was the voice of reason and none of those folks working in the White House for a white supremacist defended her Black ass.
This is certainly a far cry from the days in which she swore that we would all have to “bow down” to her ex-boss once he came president. About that, Omarosa claimed that her support of Trump is not unlike Keisha Knight-Pulliam’s support of Bill Cosby in the wake of over 60 women accusing him of sexual assault. While I wouldn’t have done like Rudy Huxtable and showed up to court with Cosby for his rape trial, Omarosa is purposely avoiding the reality that she played a far more active role in Trump’s crimes than Keisha Knight-Pulliam has played with what Old Man Quaalude.
Regardless of whatever personal relationship the two had, Omarosa made a conscious choice to align herself with a man whom she knew would pose harm to so many marginalized communities. Not only did she align herself with him, she allowed herself to be a prop for no other reason than a title and the bragging rights of working in the White House. That is, whatever she did there because to this day, no one is certain what that was.
Omarosa’s new tall tales overstating her White House role recall the time she tried to do the same thing when it came to her stint at the Clinton White House.
Back in 2004, Omarosa told People at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C.: “I have done logistics and advance and event planning for the White House under the Gore staff. … At 23, I got appointed to the White House. That was not a place to learn how to be a young professional. That’s a very difficult environment, because they don’t believe in training. They just kind of throw you in the fire.”
However, a former staffer told the magazine,“Her exact title was scheduling correspondent. Her job was to respond to invitations.” And she didn’t hold that job long ’cause she apparently wasn’t doing it and getting on everyone’s nerves in the process. As to why she was fired this time, it is being reported that her abuse of car services was the main motivator. I doubt that, but it was a good enough excuse for John Kelly to boot her.
Because Omarosa has a knack for photoshopping her resume in real time, it’s no wonder why the likes of Jimmy Kimmel are openly questioning whether she is just making stuff up. I also question her sincerity. She claims she would never vote for Trump again, but has also said that we would be begging for Trump back if Mike Pence became president.
Not only that, she is praising Melania Trump, a hypocritical birther pusher herself.
I will give Omarosa one thing: despite all odds, she remains a fixture on television. She’s like Tiffany Pollard’s mean conservative auntie in that regard. Even so, I’m not buying what she’s selling. She is not remorseful about supporting Trump, only that it blew up in her face. This show is just another check until she figures out her next move.
She may be trying to be nice by her metric right now, but the argumentative opportunist she’s long shown herself to be will soon resurface. Whether or not she realizes it, she’s not that hard to figure out.
Her kind never is.