Omarosa’s claim that Trump used the ‘n-word’ is coming apart pretty quickly

There is no story the news media would like to tell more than this one: “Trump caught using n-word.” Manigault-Newman knows this, and she needs attention. So last week she tried to give them that story by making the claim that she had heard Trump say the world backstage while she was working on The Apprentice. Aside from the question of whether anyone should even care, let’s consider how we might determine whether we believe the claim. After all, if it’s strictly Manigault-Newman herself claiming to be a witness, and there was no one else to corroborate it, then it’s strictly a he-said-she-said and there’s no way to know for sure. But often people who tell tall tales can’t resist the temptation to make them taller, and that’s where they tend to get in trouble. In Manigault-Newman’s new book “Unhinged,” she claims there is outside corroboration to her claim about Trump using the n-word . . . and that’s where she starts to get herself in trouble:

I’m in @Omarosa’s book on page 149. 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.

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 10, 2018

It seems like certain book publishers these days care more about getting a release out than getting the facts down.

This is why people don’t trust these “exposés,” which is especially bad for authors who actually are good and reliable. https://t.co/tkFyrtdOMW

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 10, 2018

I have no idea if Manigault-Newman was really told by someone that Luntz had made that claim, or if she just made it up. Either way, the fact that she didn’t check with him shows how seriously she took the research for her book, which is to say she didn’t take it seriously at all. There is also this: If she heard Trump talking like this during his years on The Apprentice, why didn’t she have a problem with him before she worked on his campaign, before she cheer-led for him as a candidate, and before she worked for him in the White House? If she’s not lying now about him saying it, then she was lying during the campaign when she told everyone she didn’t consider him a racist. Either way, her credibility is shot. But when your own supposed corroborating witnesses are coming forward and contradicting your claims, I think the best thing we can do with you is to just ignore you. Sorry if that causes a problem for your gold-digging, but people who lie don’t deserve any gold.