Omarosa Manigault-Newman has struck a chord of fear in President Donald Trump that rivals the fear he has struck in others.

She has done so by using many of his own tactics against him: Deceit, intimidation, media manipulation.

Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields noted on the August 17 edition of The PBS Newshour: “In a White House where most of the people are recent acquaintances of the president, she goes back longer than anybody, except the president’s daughter. She goes back 15 years. She is a Donald Trump protege and product….

“But what she does, obviously, like Elizabeth Warren, she gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And she has said things that, you know, may be subject to fact-check, but the reality is, she has tape.

“She has tape of Donald Trump groveling before her, pretending that he didn’t know that John Kelly had the day before brought her to the Situation Room…which therefore confirms the suspicion widely held that Donald Trump doesn’t have the stomach for confronting people who work for him, that he lies.  

“And you can see that he obviously is absolutely upset by her, and she’s got everybody in the White House, every male, quaking in his Guccis about those tapes. I can tell you that.”

David Brooks and Mark Shields

New York Times Columnist David Brooks, speaking on the same episode of The Newshour, outlined why her attacks on Trump have been so effective.

“Well, what’s interesting about her is, she plays by reality show rules. She plays by Trump rules. And most people who go against Trump don’t quite play by his rules. And she plays by his rules, which is no rules, that do whatever you can, it doesn’t matter what the norms and standards are. 

“And taping somebody in the Situation Room is a rather serious offense and, to me, a pretty great betrayal of any—how any White House should work. I mean, if we’re walking around each other in the hallway taping each other, just think about doing that.

“That’s just a betrayal of how normal life should happen….And so she said, they’re going to lie about me, they’re going to screw me, so I’m ready.”

In perhaps the most-quoted passage of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote: 

“From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved. 

“For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain. As long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote, but when it approaches, they revolt.

“And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined. For the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.”

Niccolo Machiavelli

Donald Trump has always used fear to instill and maintain loyalty among his closest associates—and to intimidate his many enemies.

But Machiavelli offers a warning on the uses of fear: 

“Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred, for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together.

“Cruelties ill committed are those which, although at first few, increase rather than diminish with time….In taking a state, the conqueror must arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to recur to them very day, and so as to be able, by not making fresh changes, to reassure people and win them over by benefiting them. 

“Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or bad counsels,” warns Machiavelli, “is always obliged to stand with knife in hand, and can never depend on his subjects, because they, owing to continually fresh injuries, are unable to depend upon him.”

From the onset of his Presidency, Trump has violated this warning with a vengeance. And now he is “obliged to stand with knife in hand.”

Omarosa is the first former Trump loyalist to emerge as a fervent Trump critic. And she may have even worse in store for him. 

Warns David Brooks: 

“All sorts of signs are pointing in this direction, that we’re going to wind up with an election where….people are basically going to be voting, when race is a hot button issue, with a man who has a history of bigoted comments, and then voting along those lines.”

With Democratic voters—many of them blacks and Hispanics—energized, Trump’s obvious racism could sweep Republicans from the House of Representatives. 

Omarosa seems determined to make that happen.

On the August 12, 2018 edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Omarosa Manigault-Newman revealed that she had recorded a conversation with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

This had occurred on December 13, 2017, in the White House Situation Room. This is the part of the White House where the most sensitive conversations occur.

She justified her unprecedented violation of the Situation Room thus: “They take me into the Situation Room, the doors are locked, they tell me I can’t leave and they start to threaten me, put fear in me, to put me under duress.

“I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies; the President lies to the American people, [press secretary] Sarah Huckabee [Sanders] stands in front of the country and lies every single day.

“You have to have your own back or else you’ll look back and you’ll have 17 knives in your back. I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies.”

The next day, August 13, 2018, Omarosa threw an even more embarrassing bombshell at the man who had once been her mentor and promoter. 

She revealed the conversation—also taped—she had had with President Donald Trump on the day of her firing. 

Donald Trump

TRUMP:  “Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?”

OMAROSA:  “General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.”

TRUMP: “Nobody even told me about it,”

OMAROSA:  “Wow.”

TRUMP:  “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it, I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.” 

The tape reveals a duel between practiced deceivers: Trump is trying to convince Omarosa that he knew nothing about her firing—and that he can do nothing to prevent it. 

She, on the other hand, never tips her hand that she doesn’t believe him—and that she’s recording their conversation.

At least for the moment, Trump was the more deceived, tweeting that same day: “Thank you Omarosa for your service! I wish you continued success.”

Apparently he didn’t expect her to attain that success at his expense.

And on August 16, 2018, Omarosa embarrassed another member of the Trump family—Lara Trump, the wife of Donald Trump’s son, Eric. 

Lara Trump

She did so by revealing yet another tape—of a conversation between the two—during her appearance on MSNBC. 

This had occurred on December 16—three days after Omarosa’s firing by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.  

Lara Trump referred to a December 15 New York Times article where Omarosa had said: “I have seen things that made me uncomfortable, that have upset me, that have affected me deeply and emotionally, that has affected my community and my people. And when I can tell my story, it is a profound story that I know the world will want to hear.”  

LARA TRUMP: “It sounds a little like, obviously, that there are some things you’ve got in the back pocket to pull out. Clearly, if you come on board, like, we can’t have . . .” 

OMAROSA:  “Oh God, no.”

LAURA TRUMP: “Everything, everybody positive, right?”   

Lara Trump then offered Omarosa a speaker’s position with the 2020 Trump re-election campaign. It would pay her about $15,000 a month.

LARA TRUMP: “All the money that we raise and that pays salaries is directly from donors, small-dollar donors for the most part. So I know you, you were making 179 [$179,000 a year] at the White House, and I think we can work something out where we keep you right along those lines.”

After Omarosa played her tape of the conversation, Lara Trump released a statement. She and her “entire family was concerned” about Omarosa after her firing. 

“We still wanted her on our team because we cared so much about her personally. That’s why I reached out to offer her a position with the 2020 Trump Campaign before we knew anything about the gross violations of ethics and integrity during her White House tenure.”

Omarosa viewed the offer differently: “I saw this as an attempt to buy my silence,” she said on MSNBC.

And she issued her own statement: “I am not going anywhere. I’m not going to be bullied. I’m not intimidated. And I’m going to go toe-to-toe with him [President Trump]. Everything he throws at me—believe me, my tapes are much better than theirs.”

She threatened to release more tapes “if I need to. I’ll do what I have to do to protect myself.”

Meanwhile, President Trump has not remained silent—although he has reportedly been urged to do so by his closest aides and attorneys. 

On August 13, he attacked Omarosa on Twitter: “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” 

Arizona United States Senator Jeff Flake objected to this use of language: “This kind of language is unbecoming of a President of the United States. There is no excuse for it, and Republicans should not be okay with it.”

“When they go low, we go high!” was an inspiring line from then-First Lady Michelle Obama during the 2016 Presidential election. 

Unfortunately, it proved only that good guys finish last.

During the campaign, supporters of Republican candidate Donald J. Trump repeatedly threatened violence against his opponent, Hillary Clinton.  

Among those threats:

• In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter threatened to forcibly remove Clinton from the White House if she won the race: “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,”
• Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Clinton: “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take….I would do whatever I can for my country.”

Even Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, expressed fear of what might happen if Trump lost the election.

Fergus Cullen

“That’s really scary,” Cullen said, recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “In this country, we’ve always had recriminations after one side loses. But we haven’t had riots. We haven’t had mobs that act out with violence against supporters of the other side. 

“There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said. 

Trump even began encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He urged them to act as poll watchers in “other” [non-white] communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”

And many of his supporters promised to do so.

“Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.

“I’ll look for…well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

Knowing that large numbers of angry—and possibly armed—Right-wingers planned to descend on polling places could only have had a chilling effect on untold numbers of Democratic voters. And this would have been especially true in heavily conservative states. 

Both the USA Patriot Act and the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act have statutes dealing with making terrorist threats against government institutions to influence their members.  

If Trump’s remarks did not violate one or both of those laws, certainly remarks made by his surrogates did. 

Thus, the Justice Department could have cited the Patriot Act in indicting Trump and/or any number of his followers for “activities that…appear to be intended…to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion [and]…occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” 

The Justice Department could have also demanded that the results of the election be invalidated on the basis that widespread voter and candidate intimidation played a massive role in it.

But that, of course, did not happen.

So far, only one person has proven Trump’s equal—if not superior—in fighting fire with fire: Omarosa Manigauot-Newman, his onetime “Apprentice” protégé. 

The relationship between Donald Trump and Omarosa dates to 2004, when she became a participant in the first season of “The Apprentice,” NBC’s “reality” TV series.

Her rudeness and ruthlessness toward other contestants quickly made her “the woman America loved to hate,” according to Jet magazine. 

TV Guide included her in its 2013 list of “The 60 Nastiest TV Villains of All Time.” 

In 2008, she appeared on “Celebrity Apprentice”—where she was again fired after failing to sell more artwork than a rival team. 

During the 2016 Presidential race, she served as Trump’s Director of African-American Outreach, although she had absolutely no credible ties to the black community. 

Omarosa Manigault-Newman

(By Photography by Glenn Francis of PacificProDigital.com)

And, in September, 2016, she famously predicted: “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.”

When  Trump moved into the White House on January 20, 2017, Manigault moved in with him as his director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. 

Her arrogance and rudeness quickly won her as many enemies among White House staffers as among her former “Apprentice” rivals. 

A typical example: On April 8, 2017, she married John Allen Newman, the senior pastor at The Sanctuary at Mt. Calvary, a church in Jacksonville, Florida. Afterwards, in full bridal attire, Omarosa took her 39-member bridal party to the White House for an extended photo shoot. 

According to Politico, White House senior aides and security officials were caught by surprise. Omarosa hadn’t alerted them in advance. Her visitors—lacking security clearances—“loudly wandered around” the Rose Garden and West Wing. 

Throughout the 2016 Presidential election, then-First Lady Michelle Obama famously exhorted: “When they go low, we go high!”

Inspiring, yes. But it didn’t prevent Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump from employing Russian Intelligence officers and computer-hackers to win the election.

On June 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his campaign met with Russian Intelligence agents at Trump Tower.

The purpose: To obtain derogatory information about Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Among those attending:   

• Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr.;
• His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
• His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort;
• At least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, including Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya; and
• Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of “having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.”

Trump Tower  

(By Jorge Láscar from Australia)

This was nothing less than treason—meeting with officials of a hostile foreign power to manipulate an American Presidential election.

After The New York Times broke the story, Trump “helped” his son draft a false statement to explain the purpose of the meeting. 

On July 8, 2017, Donald Trump, Jr., issued the following statement: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government.”

Confronted with overwhelming evidence, President Trump tweeted on August 5, 2018: 

“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

On July 22, 2016, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Hillary Clinton’s personal email server].  I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” 

Thus, Trump called upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.  

Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts. 

Donald Trump

On December 16, 2016, then-FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.

“When they go low, we go high” did not deter Trump from threatening his Republican and Democratic opponents with violence. 

No other candidate—Republican or Democrat—had ever made such repeated and brutal use of threats of physical assault in pursuing the Presidency.

• On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
• An ABC reporter summed this up as: “The message to Republicans was clear on [March 16[: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.'”
• Republicans clearly saw this as a threat: Paul Ryan, their Speaker of the House, said on March 17: “Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable.” 
• Philip Klein, the managing editor of the Washington Examiner, wrote on the eve of the Republican National Convention in July: “Political commentators now routinely talk about the riots that would break out in Cleveland if Trump were denied the nomination, about how his supporters have guns and all hell could break loose, that they would burn everything to the ground. It works to Trump’s advantage to not try too hard to dispel these notions.”
• On August 9, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
• “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him,” said Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA). 

Making threats against anyone under protection by the U.S. Secret Service is a felony. Yet Donald Trump was never held legally accountable by the Justice Department.   

Threats of this type continued to be made by Trump supporters right up to the day of the election.

• On July 29, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant acting as a Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
• At a town hall meeting where Trump’s Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence appeared, a woman named Rhonda said: “For me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself am ready for a revolution.”