By escalating their spat, he’s giving her exactly what she wants: attention, and the book sales likely to come with it.
In case you haven’t noticed, President Donald Trump and his former employee, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, are engaged in a very public battle with each other. This feud is dominating cable-news stations and social media. It’s everywhere — and that’s exactly what Omarosa wants.
See, Omarosa is one of those people who is famous for being famous. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that she’s famous for being infamous. She achieved celebrity after appearing on season one of The Apprentice, not because she was particularly lovable or warm or cuddly, but because she was so crafty and conniving. People didn’t love her; they loved to hate her. She has had a reality-television career not in spite of the fact that people think she’s awful, but because people think she’s awful.
This is one of the reasons why it makes so little sense for Trump to try to ruin her with insults. Even if his brutal tweets about her somehow accomplished what he wanted them to accomplish — presumably, to make other people think that she’s a bad person and take his side in their fight — it wouldn’t matter. After all, being painted as a villain has never hurt this woman. Quite the opposite: It gave her a career. When you’re famous for being famous, it really doesn’t matter why you get attention; it only matters that you get it.
Even worse for Trump, people don’t seem to be taking his side in this dispute. His decision to call her “that dog,” in particular, has elicited massive outrage on her behalf. A CNN column called it “sexist” and “racist.” Senator Jeff Flake stated that Trump’s “language is unbecoming of a President of the United States.” Countless others have taken to Twitter to express similar sentiments. Thanks to the president’s own words, the notoriously hated Omarosa Manigault-Newman is now able to play the the victim — something that would never have been possible otherwise.
All of this, of course, is happening while Omarosa is trying to sell a book. Like any author, she’s certainly hoping to get a lot of publicity in hopes that it will lead to greater sales — and you really can’t ask for better publicity than a highly public spat with the president of the United States. Every time Trump tweets about her, the news networks have to talk about it. And every time the news networks talk about it, she gains more of the attention on which her career depends. Insofar as the book will sell only because of the controversy, Trump might as well be paying her all over again.
Yes, I understand that Omarosa went after him first. I understand that she’s accusing him of some pretty horrible things (such as using the n-word and being “functionally illiterate”). But Trump would have been much better off not escalating the conflict —not just because he did so in a manner thoroughly unbecoming of his office, but because he didn’t really do his own cause any favors in the process, either. In fact, he just may have helped her sell some more books.