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.”