Unhinged

August 20, 2018
In this venomous tell-all, the Trump presidency resembles the reality show that birthed it. Newman recounts her journey from a 2004 turn on the Trump-hosted television competition The Apprenticeâwhere, she candidly recounts, she crafted a provocative, troublemaking persona to succeedâto her work on his presidential campaign and 2017 stint in the White House Office of Public Liaison, where, as one of the administration's few African-American staffers, she struggled to spin his policies to women and minorities. She describes her gradual emergence from blind loyalty to the "cult" of "Trumpworld" into viewing the president as "a racist, a bigot and a misogynist" who is "just this side of functionally illiterate" and suffering "mental decline," which she blames for his tweets. Newman is similarly cutting about other administration figures like Kellyanne Conway ("a calculat swamp monster") and first daughter Ivanka, who, Newman alleges, manipulates Trump's purported quasi-incestuous infatuation with her. Few of these accusations are new; Newman's splashiest revelation is her unverified claim to have a tape of Trump using the n-word. (She has released tapes that confirm her account of her firing and contradict what Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said about it.) This entertaining, gossipy memoir of White House dysfunction will be catnip to scandal lovers.