The Education Department on Wednesday repudiated as “lies” the sensational claims made about Secretary Betsy DeVos in the newly released book by former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman.
In her book, Ms. Manigault Newman alleged that President Trump called his education secretary “ditzy,” that he planned to “get rid of her,” and that Ms. DeVos suggested that black college students who booed her graduation speech were “too stupid to understand her agenda.”
“This disgraced former White House employee is peddling lies for profit,” said DeVos press secretary Liz Hill in a statement. “The book is a joke as are the false claims she’s making about Secretary DeVos.”
In Unhinged, which has been panned by the White House, Ms. Manigault Newman said that the president was disgusted with Ms. DeVos after graduates interrupted her with boos during her May 2017 speech at Bethune-Cookman University in Dayton Beach, Florida.
“Once I returned and told [Trump] about what had happened, he shook his head in disgust,” she wrote. “[Trump] said, ’She is Ditzy DeVos, what do you expect? In a very short period of time, I will get rid of her. Believe me, believe me.’”
Ms. Manigault Newman said the secretary told her afterward, “They don’t get it. They don’t have the capacity to understand what we’re trying to accomplish,” according to the excerpt in Newsweek.
What Ms.DeVos meant, according to the former “Apprentice” contestant, was that “all those black students are too stupid to understand her agenda.”
The book, which was released Tuesday, also alleged that Mr. Trump used the n-word on an audio recording that somebody told her about, which he has denied.
Mr. Trump has since called his former staffer “Wacky Omarosa,” tweeting that she begged him for a job in the White House but was fired after complaints that she was “nothing but problems.”
.@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up. Look at her MANY recent quotes saying….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2018
….such wonderful and powerful things about me - a true Champion of Civil Rights - until she got fired. Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didn’t want interviews) when she worked in the White House. Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2018
“It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform after not taking her seriously when she only had positive things to say about the President during her time in the administration,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement last week.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer dismissed the book as “nothing more than sour grapes from a disloyal staffer.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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