Who is Omarosa, the former Trump aide turned leading detractor?

Omarosa Manigault Newman, who attacks the president in a brutal memoir, rose to prominence on The Apprentice and reportedly fell out with John Kelly

Omarosa Manigault Newman once memorably declared: “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”

The reality TV villain turned White House official – once arguably Donald Trump’s most prominent African American supporter – is now herself both critic and detractor in her brutal new memoir. Manigault Newman is apparently seeking some revenge of her own.

The 44-year-old devout Christian was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. She graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism in 1996 from Central State University in Wilberforce in the same state. Her brother, Jack Manigault, was shot dead in what police described as “lovers’ quarrel” in Youngstown in 2011.

She held a junior position working for the former vice-president Al Gore for just under a year and worked on Barack Obama’s first election campaign in Ohio. In 2016 she told the New York Times: “I’ve been very vocal about the fact that I had been a Democrat my entire life. As an African American, that’s what we tend to do. African-Americans are loyal to the Democratic party, but unfortunately, the Democratic party is not loyal to them.”

Manigault Newman first met Trump in September 2003, when The Apprentice was in its first season. She also featured in two spin-offs: Celebrity Apprentice in 2008 and All-Star Celebrity Apprentice, opposite the British journalist Piers Morgan, in 2013. She was told “You’re fired!” every time.

She became Trump’s director of African American outreach in the 2016 presidential election and was at his watch party in New York on election night, mingling with journalists and expressing cautious optimism as results trickled in.

Manigault Newman was then the only African American on the senior staff at the White House, taking the position of director of communications for the White House office of public liaison, working on outreach to various groups. In April last year, she married John Allen Newman, senior pastor at a Baptist church in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Trump international hotel in Washington.

But she reportedly fell out with the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and was given her marching orders in December 2017. Afterwards she claimed she was “haunted” every day by Trump’s tweets and “attacked” by colleagues when she tried to intervene. She even suggested that he tweeted in his underwear in the early morning.

Manigault Newman compared leaving the White House to being freed from a plantation. And when, appearing on Celebrity Big Brother, she was asked if people should be worried, she nodded and said: “It is going to not be OK. It’s not.”