Trump blasts 'Wacky Omarosa' after leaked tape: 'Vicious but not smart'

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Omarosa levels claims against the Trump administration

Former White House aide Omarosa attacks President Trump in her new tell-all book; Siraj Hashmi of the Washington Examiner weighs in.

President Trump blasted “Wacky” Omarosa Manigault-Newman on Monday after she leaked a secretly taped phone call with him amid promotion of her new book, calling her “vicious, but not smart” and saying White House Chief of Staff John Kelly considered her a “loser.”

“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart,” Trump tweeted on Monday.

He went on to say he heard "really bad things" about her time there: "Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!"

Numerous White House officials, as well as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, already have weighed in to blast the former aide for her publicity tour -- which has included the release of a separate recording of Chief of Staff Kelly firing her in the Situation Room.

NBC’s “Today” on Monday morning then aired the recording she made of a phone call with Trump shortly after she was terminated.

“Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw in the news that you’re thinking about leaving. What happened?” Trump asks on the recording.

“General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave,” Omarosa responds.

“No. Nobody ever told me about it,” Trump replies.

“Wow,” Omarosa says.

“You know, they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it,” Trump was recorded as saying.

Reacting to the tape, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley described the frenzy as the work of a "disgruntled" and "self-serving" former official.

“The thought of doing something like that to a fellow employee, not to mention the leader of the free world, is completely disgraceful,” he told "Fox & Friends."

Also on “Fox & Friends” Monday, Giuliani defended Trump and said Manigault-Newman’s recording of conversations between herself and Trump and Kelly was a violation of national security rules.

“Donald Trump made her. What kind of ingratitude is this?” Giuliani said.

Over the weekend, Manigault-Newman released the recording of Kelly notifying her of her firing. Manigault-Newman said Sunday that Kelly was “threatening” her in the White House.

In the recording, Kelly seeks Manigault-Newman’s “friendly departure” from the administration without any “difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.” According to the tape, Kelly says things could get “ugly” for her, and that she would be “open to some legal action” for conduct that would merit a court martial if she were in the military.

Manigault-Newman described that comment as a “very obvious…threat” on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. She said she had recorded the conversation because otherwise no one would believe her.

"We've got to talk to you about leaving the White House," Kelly apparently says in the tape. "It's come to my attention over the last few months that there's been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you and the use of government vehicles and some other issues.”

When she asks whether the president was aware of her pending termination, Kelly, on the audio recording, purportedly tells her that “this is a non-negotiable discussion” and that her firing was related to “pretty serious integrity violations.”

Trump followed up his anti-Omarosa tweets later Monday morning with a message to the media:

"While I know it's 'not presidential' to take on lowlife Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!"

Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.