New York
Trump haters, most recently the president’s former aide and cheerleader Omarosa Manigault, now breathlessly claim that an outtake video tape exists in which private citizen Donald J. Trump drops the N-word while he hosted NBC’s The Apprentice.
President Trump forcefully dismissed this accusation on Thursday.
“@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of The Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa,” Trump declared via Twitter. “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up.”
“I’m in @Omarosa’s book on page 149,” pollster Frank Luntz explained via Twitter. “She claims to have heard from someone who heard from me that I heard Trump use the N-word. Not only is this flat-out false (I’ve never heard such a thing), but Omarosa didn’t even make an effort to call or email me to verify. Very shoddy work.”
Trump communications advisor Lynn Patton, currently an aide to Housing Secretary Ben Carson, released a statement on this controversy, excerpted below:
Tonight, on the MSNBC program, Hardball, Omarosa revealed to the general public what she had told me last December: That former Apprentice producer, Bill Pruitt, was the original source of the “N-word” tape.
Bill Pruitt is a mutual friend.
I just spoke to Bill Pruitt tonight before releasing this statement.
He confirmed to me (before Hardball had even gone off the air) that he does NOT have an audio tape of President Trump using the “N-word” and has NEVER had an audio tape of President Trump using the “N-word.” Period…
Based upon her conflicting accounts and the newfound information revealed in my statement, it should be abundantly clear to everyone that not only is her book a complete work of fiction, but that the existence of this elusive “N-word” tape is a figment of her imagination and merely a destructive tool of manipulation applied only when it best serves her interests.
Notwithstanding these powerful denials, if such a recording were out there, surely it would have been leaked from NBC, the same network from which oozed the notorious Access Hollywood tape that caused Trump such massive trouble just weeks before the 2016 general election. The hot-mic audio on that recording — in which Trump used locker-room bombast to boast to then-host Billy Bush about his sexual exploits — seemed like the death knell for Trump’s campaign. Somehow, like Rasputin, Trump survived that political knife attack. He continued to campaign, attracted massive crowds, and otherwise walked away virtually unscratched by the Access Hollywood tape.
Thus, given the old-guard media’s boundless hatred of Trump, it’s impossible to believe that his enemies in and around NBC did not drop this alleged N-bomb on his head. This supposed tape’s release would have transformed Trump from a man whose playboy lifestyle millions overlooked into David Duke with a penthouse. Republican politicians would have sped away from him, fearing that his radioactivity would make them glow in the dark. Those who loathe Trump the most would not have hesitated to deploy the assumed N-word tape against him as late as Election Eve, if that would have torpedoed him.
This strongly suggests that this recording is guarded by unicorns and leprechauns. In other words: No, Virginia, there is no N-word tape.
Recording aside, no witnesses have surfaced to say “Trump said this” or “Trump said that.” Tellingly, there is no comment or statement that Trump purportedly uttered beyond the vague, disembodied charge that he “used the N-word.”
A journalist last week asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “Can you stand at the podium and guarantee the American people will never hear Donald Trump utter the N-word on a recording in any context?”
“I can’t guarantee anything,” Sanders replied.
This comment set Left-wing gums flapping and Chyrons flashing.
Can anyone make such a guarantee about anybody?
It would be horrible, outrageous, and a massive-self-inflicted wound if a recording arose in which Trump said something like, “Boy, I really hate it when I have to sell a condo in Trump Tower to some ni–er.”
Such a recording likely would cripple Trump’s presidency.
But what if a tape emerged in which Trump said, “When I was a kid, some people in my neighborhood denounced black Americans as ‘ni–ers.’ I thought they only used that nasty word down South. It made me sad, sick, and angry to hear such revolting language.”
Such a tape, by definition, would violate the guarantee that the journalist asked of Sanders. At the same time, that recording would enrage Trump’s critics who want nothing more than to fit him for a white hood.
As for Omarosa, if what she said is true about what he said, why did she work so diligently for this suspected racist? Why did she reportedly beg for a job at the White House, where she could serve this accused bigot, yet again? Why would a black woman toil so enthusiastically for a man she now claims disparages blacks?
For Trump’s enemies, the best thing about this issue is that they need not produce this mysterious tape in order for it to work its evil magic. Much like the accusations of “Trump-Russia collusion” — for which zero evidence has been presented — the “N-word tape” now will float above Trump’s head like a downpour-laden thunderhead. This elusive recording may be as big a hoax as the Trump-Putin plot to steal the White House from Hillary. But those who hate Trump’s guts will “know deep down” that the N-word recording “really exists,” even if there is no such thing. And this “knowledge” will fuel even deeper hatred of Trump among those who do not request even a proton of proof before believing the worst things imaginable about the President of the United States.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor and an emeritus media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
