Donald Trump

Omarosa Tells Stephen Colbert About Hope Hicks' White Lies

Asked what Hope Hicks' white lies included, Omarosa Manigault Newman cited the false account on crowd size at President Trump's inauguration

Omarosa Manigault Newman appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" Wednesday night where she said she was "very, very concerned" while working for President Donald Trump.

The former White House aide, fresh off the heels of a "Celebrity Big Brother" stint, elaborated on comments she made on the CBS reality show. In reference to her resignation in December, she had said, "Oh, freedom, I’ve been emancipated,” and “I feel like I just got freed off a plantation." 

"The White House I worked in, the Trump administration, was troubling," Manigault Newman told Colbert. "It was very difficult. My analogy of it being a plantation, meaning an ecosystem where people feel oppressed, is pretty clear." 

Colbert went on to ask Manigault Newman about the latest Trump staffer to depart, Hope Hicks. The White House communications director acknowledged to a House intelligence panel Tuesday that she occasionally told "white lies" for Trump. White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Hicks' resignation "had nothing to do" with that interview and had been in the works for "several weeks." 

Asked what Hicks' white lies included, Manigault Newman cited the false account on crowd size at President Trump's inauguration.

"I got to see the inauguration of Clinton, of Bush, of Obama and when we got to the Trump inauguration they said this is the largest crowd size," she said. "I said, ‘Man I’ve been to a lot of inaugurations, this wasn’t the biggest.’ I didn’t want to be the one to break it to him. I didn’t want to be that person."

Colbert also prepared a list of some of Trump's most controversial tweets and actions before asking Manigault Newman whether those actions caused her to doubt him as the commander in chief. 

Remaining loyal to the man who has now fired her multiple times, Manigault Newman responded, “Look Donald Trump was my friend for 15 years. He was my friend and watching him in this position has caused me to be excited sometimes and sometimes be very, very concerned.”

She added, “I think if you woke up and your best friend was president tomorrow, you’d have that same range of emotions.”

Colbert also asked her to explain comments on "Celebrity Big Brother" where she said Trump's tweets haunted her. Manigault Newman cited as an example Trump's tweet to announce a new policy banning transgender people from serving in the military. Federal judges went on to block the ban

She also said that her comments on "Celebrity Big Brother" that "we're not going be OK" under Trump's presidency were in the context of a "bigger discussion" about immigration roundups and in particular "about a family of a man who had been in the country for 30 years and had been sent back."   

She said she became "a bit emotional because of what's happening with Haitians, El Salvador, what's happening with a lot of the immigrants who are being put out of this country without giving them the consideration that this nation is a nation of immigrants and that we should have compassion, particularly with Dreamers."

Manigault Newman, pressed again on whether "everything would be OK under Donald Trump," said, "we'll have to wait and see." 

Contact Us