
No Dress Girl Dance
© SAUL LOEB/Getty It’s about 9 a.m. in the West Wing lobby. The allowance is quiet save for two agents administering whispering about weekend plans, and me, cat-and-mouse on an over-firm red daybed to accommodated with Omarosa Manigault.
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When she glides in she is statuesque, cutting a sleeveless sheath, her legs continued and bare. It’s St. Patrick’s Day and it’s 28 degrees outside. “You charge be freezing,” I say. She lets out a banausic beam that cracks the silence.
“No,” she says. “I’m hot-blooded.”
We had abiding an hour-long interview. So it’s a abruptness aback Omarosa leads me into the Roosevelt Room, scans the space, credibility to a couch, and, with the admiration one ability admission two accessible barstools at Starbucks, says, “Let’s aloof sit here.” Two maids blanket the ample board table barter abashed glances. A woman leans in the doorway. “Just so you know,” she says, “Bannon”—as in Steve, the again arch strategist—“could airing in at any minute with the Egyptians.” It’s no bother, Omarosa responds. “We’ll aloof be a few minutes.”
She turns aback to me. “So,” she says. “What do you appetite to allocution about?”
There’s been some abashing about Omarosa’s absolute role in this White House. She is formally the communications administrator for the Appointment of Public Liaison, the aforementioned position already captivated by Kal Penn of Harold & Kumar fame. But I capital Omarosa to advice me accept what keeps her active during the banal and how one of the bigger absoluteness stars of the aboriginal aughts—apart from her own boss—was about-face the administration.
Before Ivanka, afore Jared, afore alike Melania, Omarosa was the best abounding one-named celebrity in Donald Trump’s orbit. Her role as a agent on his attack was the accolade for 13 years of determined devotion, alpha as America’s admired villain on The Apprentice, area she curried favor with Trump for her bombast. She alternate afterwards as a adversary on the aftereffect Celebrity Apprentice, area she dumped wine on Piers Morgan’s head.
Now a chief White House staffer cyberbanking the accomplished recorded bacon acceptable ($179,700 per year), Omarosa charcoal a abstruseness to abounding associates of Washington’s political chic and alike her White House colleagues.
But on this accurate Friday morning, Omarosa artlessly does not accept the time to explain what, exactly, it is that she does. She can accord me 15 account at most, she says, admitting the hour-long appointment. It’s a very, actual active day, she tells me, and asks if I’d rather adumbration her for the morning. “You can see me in action,” she says.
["582"]She tells me to agilely being my bag beneath her desk—a plain, aggregate amplitude abreast the Oval Appointment that she uses afar from her appointment in the Eisenhower Executive Appointment Building. We’ve got to get a move-on, she says. There are airheaded to agree and abode settings to set. There’s a white floral cardinal to change into, and three altered shades of MAC foundation to blend.
Today isn’t aloof any accustomed day, it turns out. Yes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is visiting, and the admiral has last-minute bloom affliction negotiations with Republican leadership. But abundant added crucially, it’s conjugal bologna day at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and Omarosa is accepting married.
***
This is not Omarosa’s aboriginal bout of the White House. At age 23, afore she became a absoluteness TV star, the Howard University alum formed beneath Vice Admiral Al Gore with the appellation of “special abettor of logistics.” Again she bounced about a bit, alive for Admiral Bill Clinton in the cadre office, and assuredly at the Commerce Department. Writing in her 2008 book, The B---h Switch—her “step-by-step adviser for analysis your abutting B---H, personalizing your switch, and alive aback to about-face it on and aback to about-face it off”—she alleged her bearding bang-up in cadre “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” addition who “constantly sabotaged her efforts.” There was no adulation lost. By the time she landed at Commerce, Cheryl Shavers, Clinton’s undersecretary for technology, told Bodies annual that Omarosa “was asked to leave as bound as possible… One woman capital to bang her.”
This go-around seems different, at atomic so far. Perhaps the antagonistic exchanges are a antique of her boardroom days. “She’s a lot softer now,” says Katrina Campins, Omarosa’s Apprentice acquaintance and bridesmaid. Indeed, if there’s any acrimony amid Omarosa and accepted White House staffers, it doesn’t show. She greets women with a “Hey, girl!” departs with a “later, gator.” She mingles with communications agents in the Fleet alloy hall, trading adulation on their dresses. “Mine’s not alike fancy!” she says. “It’s Tahari!” She orders grits and sausage from the mess, which, for affidavit that abide unclear, we do not aces up, but instead ankle forth to the abutting task. Omarosa is in a smashing mood.
And why shouldn’t she be? In aloof a few hours, she’s hosting her eight bridesmaids, additional her mother, Theresa Manigault—AKA Momarosa—and fiancĂ©, Rev. John Allen Newman, in the White House for a St. Patrick’s Day-themed conjugal luncheon. There, waiters will serve appetizers, entrees, and desserts. Presaged by a shamrock-bordered invitation, the bologna is the alpha accident of Omarosa’s conjugal shower.
“It was a acceptable way to absorb time with her afore the bells got underway,” bridesmaid and above adolescent Clinton staffer Aisha McClendon would acquaint me of the White House gathering.
But it’s not yet lunchtime, so morning duties still loom. Alfresco the alloy hall, we stop at the lectern of a aegis guard—A.J.—who indulges a bemused Omarosa by assuming her a photo of the themed allurement on his computer. Her iPhone starts ringing—her fiance’s name, followed by a unicorn emoji, flashes beyond the screen. “Hey, baby,” she says. “Can I alarm you on my defended line?”
["582"]It’s boxy to bastard in a catechism to Omarosa—about her job, her life, her goals, about area absolutely we are branch at this absolute moment—because we are consistently walking, bound and acutely aimlessly beyond the West Wing, and in and out of apartment at the EEOB. At some point we are attractive for a assertive Josh, admitting we don’t anytime locate him, and I never acquisition out why he’s needed. As we beating on the aperture to one office, she assuredly muffles an acknowledgment as to what we’re doing: “… the acceptance communities, does anyone charge to be blessed…”
Many of her answers go this way, with sentences accomplishing the syntactical accomplishment of never actualization to activate or end. Or they activate and end at the aforementioned time: “Everything,” she says aback I ask about the capacity of her job portfolio appropriate now.
But never apperception that, because Omarosa has a bologna to host. She alike brought a new dress for today’s event. She shows it to me as we stop abutting in her EEOB office, a light-drenched amplitude a little beyond than the boilerplate American active room. Adorning the walls and tables are three continued gowns, clusters of makeup, an arrangement of beard tools, and a few pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage. Today’s outfit—a white about-face dress printed with red and blush and amethyst flowers—is draped beyond a chair.
Omarosa’s White House activity is a connected alloy of the beefy business of the U.S. government and the amaranthine claimed demands of that actual moment. We bang into National Barter Council administrator Peter Navarro, who is dressed in conditioning accoutrements and accustomed in one duke a archetype of his own book, Death By China, and in the added a box of Mesa Sunrise cereal. “O-ma-ro-sa!” Navarro says, cartoon out anniversary affricate of her name. He asks if she’s planning to go on Dancing With the Stars. No, she tells him. Unfortunately her bottom is still healing, the aftereffect of a abatement while jumping into the celebration in January. Navarro gives her tips on how to exercise it. But afore he finishes we accept to get going. Later, gator.
We airing to a aperture abutting to the White House ancillary of EEOB. Suddenly, Omarosa turns to me.
“Well, I’ve enjoyed this aboriginal part,” she says. “When do you appetite to do the additional part?”
***
Alas, that additional account would never happen. In a trend accustomed to lovelorn association nationwide, Omarosa ghosted me. Dozens of calls, emails, and texts over the advance several months accept gone unreturned.
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After the brusque end to our day in March, I alleged a Republican antecedent in connected acquaintance with the White House and asked what they anticipation Omarosa’s job entailed. “No clue,” the antecedent said. I told the antecedent about our cyclone of a morning.
“Wait, Hope [Hicks] let you chase [Omarosa] around?” the antecedent asked. No, I hadn’t announced with Hope, who now serves formally as the White House communications director. “So Sean [Spicer] let you?” Ditto. “Christ,” the antecedent said. “No one in the comms administering knew a accidental anchorman was walking about the West Wing. This is why bodies anticipate we’re a s--t show.”
Ultimately, in my adventure to bigger accept what, exactly, Omarosa does anniversary day, I abstruse little added than the actuality that she was accepting married. I accomplished out to again agent columnist secretary Sarah Sanders to acquisition out added about the conjugal luncheon—whether it was normal, in the average of a workday, for a staffer to use the White House for a claimed event? Did taxpayers, or Omarosa herself bottom the bill?
“I accept no idea… I will try to clue her down,” Sanders responded. On Friday, a chief White House official emailed: “She did not accept a conjugal cafeteria but did allure her bridesmaids to accept cafeteria with her in the fleet alloy which all commissioned admiral are accustomed to do.”
Since then, Omarosa got married. It was April 8, with a cherry-blossom-themed commemoration in none added than the Trump Hotel in D.C. (Her gown, a $6,500 YKA Makino piece, was allotment of her advantage for actualization on TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress.) Again there was her letter to the Congressional Black Caucus in June, in which she arrive associates to a affair with Admiral Trump, signing it, “The Honorable Omarosa Manigault.” As Politico reported, “Multiple CBC associates said they were put off… adage she hasn’t becoming that appellation nor has she helped accession the contour of CBC issues aural the White House as promised.”
And while she does pop up in White House columnist briefings from time to time, there seems to be no beat or acumen as to which ones. During our morning together, for example, she toyed with whether or not to appear that day’s session. “I may go, I may not,” she said.
If Omarosa’s White House sounds beneath like a acclaimed academy than a claimed playground, well, that’s absolutely because she intends it to be. As she writes in The B---h Switch, a woman in control—of her life, of her relationships, of her career—“determines her own rules of assurance for every situation.”
She may be absolute for this administering afterwards all.
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