Omarosa Manigault Newman addressed a legal filing by the Trump campaign — sort of — as she continued her book tour for “Unhinged” on Tuesday night with an appearance on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.”
Manigault, who has spent the past two days plugging her book while also releasing secret audio recordings made during her time in the White House, was hesitant to talk too much about the arbitration.
“As of today, Donald Trump has decided to sue me or bring litigation against me to silence me and to not allow me to tell my story,” she told told host Noah. “I just have a whole host of attorneys who are telling me to not give Trump the ammunition.”
.@OMAROSA discusses her new book “Unhinged,” her secret tapes, and the one way to bring Trump down. Extended intv: https://t.co/YFYQDK32NZ pic.twitter.com/05fGiaiQj0
The Trump campaign, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., filed arbitration against the reality TV star on Tuesday morning in New York for allegations that she violated her non-disclosure agreement with the campaign by releasing tapes she recorded of her firing by Chief of Staff John Kelly, a subsequent conversation with Trump himself, and a 2016 discussion with campaign aides about the candidate’s possible use of the N-word.
Manigault told MSNBC on Tuesday afternoon, after the administration filed the arbitration, “I don’t believe that I have violated, but I will leave it to the lawyers to sort it out.”
Most of her conversation with Noah centered on the content of the recordings or the need to make them at all. Manigault said she felt like she needed to tape conversations to protect herself, she said.
“I knew I had to cover my back and document what I saw as an opportunity to kind of blow the whistle on a lot of the corruption going on in the White House, and I knew that I needed to document that corruption, otherwise people would not take it seriously,” Manigault said.
Manigault, who rose to prominence and befriended the president on his show, “The Apprentice,” said she wanted to be a billionaire just like Trump — and she was blinded by the loyalty in joining the administration.
“I wanted to lead one of his companies. He inspired me. I wanted to be a billionaire,” she told Noah. “I grew up in the Westlake projects [in Youngstown, Ohio] and I wanted to be wealthy and that’s who I thought I could aspire to be, but boy has he been a great disappointment. And because I did have this blind spot and was blindly loyal, and I looked like the biggest dummy following this person because I didn’t have that same perspective. And sometimes you have to step back in order to get a clear view, and I recognized that I was going down the wrong path with Trump.”
ABC News’ Chad Murray contributed to this report.
