“Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”-President Donald J. Trump
It was half past midnight on June 17, 1972 when a black security guard noticed a strange occurrence at the Watergate Hotel. Hotel Security Officer Frank Wills was patrolling the parking garage when he noticed masking tape covering the locks of the stairwell door of the hotel entrance. He ripped the tape off of the door and went on his break at a restaurant across the street. But when he returned from his break, he noticed that the tape was back on the locks.
Frank Wills
Wills immediately alerted the police of a suspected burglary in progress at the Watergate Hotel. As officers arrived on the scene, they arrested 5 men, some of them were C.I.A. agents. The last thing that Wills would ever think was that his discovery would spell the downfall and resignation of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nor did he fathom that he had uncovered the biggest political scandal of the 20th century. It was not only Watergate, but a host of whistleblowing revelations that would send Nixon scurrying from the White House to his rat hole in San Clemente. The Nixon Tapes, Deep Throat, (the informant, not the movie) and the Pentagon Papers were all cuts on the artery of the presidency that led to Nixon’s iconic retreat from the Oval Office into Helicopter 1
But while Nixon went home to San Clemente, the man who made $80.00 a week as a security guard went on to a life of poverty and ignominy. Although he did the lecture circuit for a short period of time, Frank Wills would pay the price of a lifetime for his aggravating attention to detail. He would live the rest of his days destitute and unemployed. He couldn’t afford the utilities in the home his mother left him in South Carolina. He died alone in poverty. No book deals. No movie offers. Every movie written on the subject omitted him. It was as though he never made that phone call that fateful night in June. He was in effect, erased from history.
Nearly 40 years later, another black whistleblower is threatening to bring down a sitting president. Omarosa Manigalt Newman is a most unlikely savior of the American public. The history of her audio and alleged video revelations are peculiar to say the least.
Omarosa rose to fame as a reality television star on the 1st season of the Apprentice,starring now President Donald Trump. Adopting the playbook of the white male corporate manifesto, Omarosa engaged in the typical cut throat, ruthless, dog-eat-dog tactics prevalent in Corporate America. These machinations earned her the scorn of every American male in the country as they whispered the time honored invective of “bitch” whenever she appeared on the TV screen. She was soon named by E! TV as the number one bad girl on reality television. Manigalt decried the criticism of her actions as hypocritical in light of the fact that these tactics were standard operating procedure inside of every fortune 500 company in existence. This evidences a profound sense of naivety on Manigalt’s part. If there is anything for certain, its the unwritten rule that the rules practiced in Corporate America is exclusively the privilege of white males only. These rules are arbitrary and expendable if they are adapted for any other purpose, by any other person.
After being fired in week 9, she was invited back to the 2008 sequel, Celebrity Apprentice. After being fired again, she and Trump collaborated in a dating show called the Ultimate Merger, where 12 hapless nitwits, and white knights competed for her scandulous affections. Apparently, there was something about her that Donald Trump just could not get enough of because he invited her back to an all star Celebrity Apprentice in 2013. Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Kimmel and CBS soon got on the Omarosa Train as she became the most popular reality tv star in the industry.
But Trump was not through with his creation. In 2016, Trump made Omarosa the African-American Director of Outreach for his presidential campaign. And like a faithful automaton, she was a ride or die chick for her boss when she proclaimed on PBS’s Frontline that:
“Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
She was rewarded for her fidelity with the title of Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison after Trump’s inauguration. She would later declare to Megyn Kelly that she was a “Trumplican.” She further indicated that she would advise African-Americans to switch parties due to the benign neglect policies of the Democratic Party.
This co-signage and the influence from it, endowed Manigalt with a touch of meglomania when she sent an invitation to the Congressional Black Caucus on white house stationary referring to herself as the Honorable Omarosa Manigalt. This must have been vindication from her earlier political dalliances in the Al Gore campaign where she was unceremoniously fired by former Gore Campaign Administrator Mary Margaret Overbey, who stated that Manigalt was “the worst hire we ever made.” She was also fired by White House Commerce Department Executive Cheryl Shavers who stated that she was “unqualified and disruptive.” This begs the question of Trump’s criterion for employing her in his administration. It is axiomatic that Black men with this kind of work history would have met a fate similar to that of Frank Wills.
But fate as they say, is a cruel mistress. On December 13, 2017, the White House announced the resignation of Omarosa, effective January 20, 2018. The day before she had been forcibly removed by the Secret Service when she was out of pocket at the White House when she requested to speak with President Trump. The Secret Service would later deactivate her White House access pass and she was thrown out on her ass (figuratively speaking) by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. Fired Again!
But Omarosa Manigalt was no fool. She understood the power of an undisclosed tape deck. Apparently, she had both video and audio recordings of President Trump using the “N word” during the filming of the Apprentice. Manigalt, who had been present during the filming of the show as well as accepting numerous invitations to reprise her role, showed no outrage at the comments at the time they were made. These comments also did not prevent her from predicting that the world would “bow down” to President Trump. Nor did it quell her enthusiasm to become a “Trumplican” after she was appointed to her position in his administration.
Trump’s racism such as it is, became an issue when she threatened to release her secretly recorded tapes to the press of Trump using the N Word (Nigger). Manigalt claims to have in her possession other tapes of Trump’s malfeasance that could spell the down fall of his administration. The tapes must be very dangerous as Trump’s Daughter-in-law, Lara offered Manigalt a 180k a year job not to disclose the contents of the tapes. Her subsequent interviews on MSNBC, NBC, & CNN have shaken the administration so deeply that they are pondering arresting her. But wait! Manigalt is no Daniel Ellsberg. She is not W. Mark Felt or Edward Snowden. Her deep throat revelations stem from an opportunistic desire to retaliate against a boss who dumped her like last night’s thot the day after.
All of this is of course, neatly leveraged over a book titled Unhinged that debuted on August 14th, which undoubtedly netted her a six figure book deal. The book is based in part, on some 200 tapes from the White House Situation Room that details Trump’s incompetence and racist inclinations. Concurrently, she has reprised her role as a Reality Television star/whistleblower on the political news circuit. Titillating and Tantalizing a thirsty media with revelations of Trump’s misdeeds, the woman that was once known as one of the greatest TV villains of the 21st century, has now become the darling of the 4th estate. When confronted by MSNBC’s Chuck Todd about her role in the present state of affairs, Manigalt explicitly stated, that ” I was complicit.”
The fact that Manigalt now stands to profit from her complicity while Frank Wills died in impoverished obscurity, or while Edward Snowden languishes in exile, is a hideously cruel and abominable joke. This lends credence to the suspicions and profound cynicisms of millions of black men who have seen black women of Manigalt’s dubious work history promoted, celebrated and heralded in the face of their hard work to achieve excellence at the cost of their sanity and self-respect in Corporate America.
In the privacy of their homes, millions of Black men are privately smiling and crowing with glee not with the revelations, but with the fact that their accusations have been vindicated despite the fact that America will never recognize the validity of their complaints in the first place. They will also crow because they will see the hand of divine providence in this latest display of universal karma. Dr. Thotenstein’s monster has now come home with an insatiable appetite for her creator.
The revelations on the tapes will not remove Donald Trump from office. At the height of this scandal, the polls show a 36% approval rating from African-Americans for Donald Trump’s Presidency. If collusion with America’s Cold War Enemy, numerous abusive executive actions, criminal charges on his associates for insider trading and embezzlement is not enough to remove him from office, it is doubtful that America will bat an eye at him using a term created by white men to degrade and dehumanize black men. America has never cared about the feelings of black people and I suspect that they are not about to start now.
As for Omarosa Manigalt Newman, Peter 2:22 seems appropriately prophetic: “”A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.” And the Church said Amen!
TONY MACEO is a Senior Blogger for the Negromanosphere and the Chief Blogger at Power and Strategy.com. Like, Share and Subscribe to the website or become a Patron at Powerofstrategies on Patreon. Till Next Time, I’ll Holla!
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