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Nicolle Wallace Jubilant Over Report of Omarosa Secretly Recording Trump: 'That's Awesome!'

August 8, 2018

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace sounded ebullient on Wednesday over a report that former White House aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman secretly recorded conversations with President Donald Trump.

The Daily Beast reported she secretly taped Trump and leveraged the conversations while shopping her new "tell-all" book about her time in the White House, entitled Unhinged. The report noted multiple sources "described the recorded conversations between Trump and Manigault as anodyne, everyday chatter, but said they did appear to feature Trump’s voice, either over the phone or in-person."

Wallace, one of the Trump administration's fiercest critics at MSNBC, didn't seem to know that as she closed her daytime program with the report—the show came back from commercial break with panelists already giggling—and noted Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, was apparently not the only person in the president's orbit to record their conversations.

"What we know is that Omarosa secretly recorded her conversations with Donald Trump, at least part of them," Daily Beast's Sam Stein said.

"That's awesome!" Wallace said. "Is Tom Arnold watching? I mean, here are the tapes. We found them! Omarosa's got them. What's on them?"

Stein noted they didn't know what was on the tapes, although one source told them "some of it was innocuous" but they didn't know the extent of the recordings. Stein said Omarosa's decision to record him without his knowledge showed the kind of people Trump surrounds himself with, as well as her lack of trust in him.

"The book is called 'Unhinged.' I mean, the president and everybody around him clearly are unhinged," Wallace said, adding Trump was surrounded by "lowlives."

Omarosa said before Trump won the presidency that eventually every one of his detractors and critics "will have to bow down to President Trump." She's changed her opinion of him a great deal since then, saying in an appearance on the reality show "Celebrity Big Brother" regarding his presidency that "it's not going to be OK" and mocking Vice President Mike Pence's religious faith.

Omarosa became a household name after appearing on "The Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice," both hosted by Trump, and became White House director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison under Trump before a stormy exit in December.