Fired White House aide and former Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman's rounds on cable news to accuse President Donald Trump of inappropriate and racially charged behavior have caused one of the president's old reality-TV show pitches to resurface: Pit white people against black people.
Speaking live on The Howard Stern Show, a radio talk show hosted by Howard Stern, in 2005, Trump offered up a new concept for his NBC reality show The Apprentice.
"It would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful people, right?" he said, mentioning it would be the "highest rated show on television."
Stern liked the idea, but Robin Quivers, Stern's black co-host, had a slightly different answer.
"Well, I think you're going to have a riot," she said with a laugh. Stern also asked later if it would "set off a racial war in this country."
Trump responded: "Actually, I don't think it would. I think that it would be handled very beautifully by me, cause as you know I'm very diplomatic."
In a 2016 interview with Inside Edition, Manigault Newman, who is black, disagreed with Trump's comments but defended him. No serious action was ever taken to make such a show materialize, with Manigault Newman saying they would "never have a season that was divided by race."
"Howard Stern said it was terrible, Robin said it was terrible, NBC thought it was terrible, I said it was a terrible idea," she said. "But one on the things I like that Donald did, was he solicited the advice of multiple people. He didn't just run with it, he wanted to see how it would resonate with people."
But with her new tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House, released Tuesday, and Manigault Newman's claims that tapes exist of Trump using the n-word while filming The Apprentice years ago, a feud has erupted between the White House and the former Apprentice star.
The president, as well as current and former administration officials, was quick to deny the claims, but it hasn't stopped Manigault Newman from appearing on TV news shows to reveal more about what she allegedly heard and saw during her one-year stint in the White House.
The president's campaign filed an arbitration suit against Manigault Newman on Tuesday over her allegations, claiming she breached a 2016 nondisclosure agreement with Trump's 2016 campaign. The president also called her a "crying lowlife" and a "dog."
Manigault Newman has continued to say she only signed an NDA for her work on the 2016 campaign and did not sign one as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. She was fired from her White House position in December 2017 after a year on the job.
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Ramsey Touchberry is a Washington Correspondent for Newsweek based in the nation's capital, where he regularly covers Congress.
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