By Omarosa Manigault Newman
The Donald Trump of 2018 is not the same man he was in 2003. When I met him, many of our beliefs were aligned. He identified with Democrats and supported commonsense gun control, like banning assault weapons; legalizing marijuana; universal health care; and even a tax hike on the wealthy. He thought Hillary Clinton was a “great” senator and donated money to her campaigns and at least $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Between then and his run for the White House, he changed his party affiliation several times, landing on Republican. When he announced on CNN’s Larry King Live his exploratory committee with possible intent to run for president, he said, “I’m a registered Republican. I’m a pretty conservative guy. I’m somewhat liberal on social issues, especially health care, etcetera. . . . I think that nobody is really hitting it right. The Democrats are too far left. . . . The Republicans are too far right.”
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I turned down the president’s offer to work for the 2020 campaign. In my response declining the position, I explained that I was not interested in working for his campaign, his company, his family, or for him directly in any capacity. My break with Donald Trump was not just a matter of resentment over how my separation was mishandled by John Kelly and the team of lawyers who locked me in the Situation Room that night. The change in my mind and heart was due to a combination of factors, but mainly, my growing realization that Donald Trump was indeed a racist, a bigot, and a misogynist. My certainty about the N-word tape and his frequent uses of that word were the top of a high mountain of truly appalling things I’d experienced with him, during the last two years in particular. It had finally sunk in that the person I thought I’d known so well for so long was actually a racist. Using the N-word was not just the way he talks, but, more disturbing, it was how he thought of me and African Americans as a whole.
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