It didn’t take Omarosa Manigault Newman very long to go from being Donald Trump’s advisor in the White House to one of the president’s harshest critics on television.
The former Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison in the White House, who left that role in a reportedly tumultuous exit in December, is already a cast member on CBS’ latest season of the reality show Celebrity Big Brother. On Thursday night, only the show’s second episode of the season, Manigault Newman (who is more commonly referred to by only her first name) wasted little time in spilling her concerns about the Trump White House in a series of emotional conversations with some of her celebrity housemates.
Perhaps most notably, Omarosa had a vague, but extremely negative, take on what she witnessed in the White House during her time with the administration, telling TV personality Ross Mathews: “No, it’s not going to be okay, it’s not. It’s so bad.”
Omarosa seemed to be spending time on the show coming to terms with her role in what has been an administration full of controversy, as she told actress Shannon Elizabeth about the difficulty of remaining loyal to Trump at the cost of some of her other personal relationships. “It’s just been so incredibly hard to shoulder what I shouldered because I was so loyal to a person and I didn’t realize that by being loyal to him it was going to make me lose a hundred other friends,” she said on the TV show.
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“I made choices and [I] just have to live with them,” Omarosa said later to Mathews, who asked the former White House staffer if she would ever vote for Trump again. “God no, never,” she said. “In a million years, never.”
Of course, Omarosa is no stranger to reality television, having risen to fame as a three-time contestant on NBC’s The Apprentice and that reality show’s spin-off programs, all of which were hosted by her former boss, Donald Trump. On NBC, Omarosa earned the reputation as a reality TV “villain” for her tendency to spar with her fellow contestants. So far, on Celebrity Big Brother, Omarosa seems more focused on sharing her feelings, especially with regard to her former employer.
Meanwhile, the White House has tried to distance itself from Omarosa since her new reality TV stint began. White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah responded to questions about Omarosa during a press conference on Thursday. “Omarosa was fired three times on The Apprentice and this was the fourth time we let her go,” Shah said in reference to her dismissal in December. “She had limited contact with the president while here. She has no contact now.”
