Donald Trump having 'psychotic episode' after losing polls, says ex-aide Omarosa: 'This is not The Apprentice'
President Donald Trump is yet to concede his defeat in the 2020 presidential election and it has put a smooth transition next month under threat. The mercurial incumbent president and his loyal allies have chosen to challenge the result in the court but have failed to reverse it. Trump’s own Republican Party has largely started accepting the reality and now, one of his former aides at the White House has gone to the extent of saying that POTUS is going through a “psychotic episode” after losing the high-stakes electoral battle last month.
On Saturday, December 26, former White House director of communications for the office of public liaison, Omarosa Manigault Newman or Omarosa, said during her talk with MSNBC’s Alex Witt: "I think Donald Trump is going through a psychotic episode. I think that he has come to terms with his loss, but his arrogance, his ego will not allow him to accept that he is not going to be president come January."
Omarosa, who rose to prominence on 'The Apprentice' starring Trump and once memorably said “every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump”, spent a year in the corridor of power starting January 2017. However, she was fired by former chief of staff John Kelly in December the same year and she later came up with a brutal memoir in 2018 titled ‘Unhinged’.
In her December 26 interview, Omarosa spoke on an Axios report that was published last week claiming the president was livid with people close to his office, including Vice President Mike Pence and current Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
"I really feel bad for those who are left because the reality is that Donald is going to turn to turn to anyone and blame everyone for his loss except for himself and the only ones left now are Mike Pence and Mark Meadows," Omarosa, 44, said. "Vice President Pence is going to be on the receiving end of Donald Trump’s wrath – and it’s erratic, it’s intense and at many times it makes absolutely no sense," she added.
The Trump camp has January 6 as its next target in the mission to overturn the result of the presidential election. His loyalists in the Congress are plotting to disrupt the legislature from counting the Electoral College (EC) votes that have confirmed Biden as the president-elect, leaving the political circles seriously divided. Biden has got 306 EC votes, 36 more than the magic figure of 270 while Trump has got 232.
Trump has reportedly put pressure on Pence to prevent ratification of Biden’s win while presiding over the January 6 joint session of the Congress. According to legal experts, the vice president has no authority to fulfill Trump’s wish and holds nothing more than a ceremonial significance of opening all certificates from where the votes will be counted.
"He probably sat (in the Oval office) and made a case to Vice President Pence and the more Pence pushes back, the louder Trump gets, the crazier he gets with his requests and then when he gets mad he just kicks you out and just stops speaking with you," Omarosa, who first met Trump in 2003 and became his director of African American outreach in the 2016 presidential battle, said.
Omarosa also said that nobody could stop the president’s antics and that the latter needed to realize that it’s all over for him. “...this is the first time in his life when he’s not able to buy himself out of a situation, lie himself out of a situation, manipulate himself out of a situation,” she added.
When Witt played a clip of the president’s speech refusing to sign the Congress’s $900M-Covid-19 relief bill where he said he may remain in office for another term, Omarosa said it reminded her of how he acted on 'The Apprentice' because he’s “trying to produce a moment” to change the outcome.
“But this is not The Apprentice, this is not a reality show. The American people need true leadership, not a reality TV host, which Donald Trump is reverting to,” she said.
Meanwhile, supporters of Trump from across the nation were planning to host a mega rally in Washington DC on January 6, the same day the Congress is scheduled to certify Joe Biden's victory.