Omarosa and the forgotten Martha Mitchell: Unlikely heroes who brought down a president?
Omarosa’s nowhere near as sincere as Martha Mitchell, the boozy Southern belle who destroyed the Nixon White House
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
AUGUST 15, 2018 12:10PM (UTC)
I doubt there was even one Vegas oddsmaker who would have taken the bet that Omarosa Manigault Newman wouldn't write a book about the Trump campaign and administration the minute she left the White House. It's what they all do. In the old days, folks generally waited until the president was out of office, but George Stephanopoulos broke that norm when he wrote his memoir shortly after leaving the Clinton White House and shared a lot of information that embarrassed his former boss.
The most famous reality-show villain on television, known only by her first name -- like Cher or Madonna -- Omarosa almost certainly took the job with the Trump campaign in the first place because it would afford her this opportunity to turn the screws on her show-business mentor, Donald Trump. That's how reality shows work. It was scripted in the stars.
Omarosa's new book may be mostly fiction, but like any good reality-show narrative, it must contain some elements of truth in order to be believable. The tapes she is releasing in carefully managed episodic fashion on her publicity tour back up at least some of the claims in her book, and she is clearly scaring the hell out of everyone in the White House. If she's been secretly taping conversations since she joined the team, there is no telling what she has.
As I watched Omarosa on the various news programs and talk shows this week, I was reminded of another famous gadfly who made the White House very nervous in similar circumstances. Back in the early 1970s, a garrulous Southern belle who was married to one of the most powerful men in Washington used to have a drink or two and then call up reporters to share information she'd overheard eavesdropping on her husband's meetings. I'm speaking of Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell, who was attorney general in the first Nixon administration and ran the Committee to Re-elect the President, also known as CREEP.
Martha Mitchell too was something of a TV star and household name, known for speaking her mind and causing no end of heartburn for the Nixon administration, largely because they didn't know what she knew and who she was going to tell it to. As it happened, she knew a lot because her husband was a corrupt schemer who was in charge of any number of nefarious doings in his capacity as Nixon's campaign chairman.
more
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/15/omarosa-and-the-forgotten-martha-mitchell-unlikely-heroes-who-brought-down-a-president/
= new reply since forum marked as read
