Omarosa Manigault Newman is making it clear to her fellow Celebrity Big Brother houseguests that she no longer stands by Donald Trump.
After asking questions about her stint in the White House during Thursday night’s episode, Ross Matthews asked Manigault Newman, 44, if she would vote for Trump again.
“God no,” she said. “Never in a million years, never.”
Earlier in the conversation, Manigault Newman told Matthews, a comedian and television personality, that the “personal toll” she paid by supporting Trump “was pretty significant.”
“I see pain when people talk to me about it, about how afraid they are,” she continued. “I made choices, I just have to live with them.”
When asked why she went to the White House with Trump by Ross, who called his probing of Manigault Newman in a confessional “investigative journalism” for the greater good, she said it was because she felt “it was a call to duty.”
“I felt like I was serving my country by serving him,” Manigault Newman said. “It was always about the country. Like, I was haunted by tweets every single day. What is he gonna tweet next?”
“Does anybody say to him, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Matthews asked.
“I mean, I tried to be that person, and then all of the people around him attacked me,” she said, breaking down into tears and claiming she got iced out by the administration.
“Who has that power to say what’s going on?” Matthews asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not there. It’s not my circus, not my monkeys,” she said. “I’d like to say not my problem but I can’t say that because, it’s bad.”
“Should we be worried?” Matthews asked, begging her to tell him everything will “be okay” because it’s what we want to hear.
She nodded: “No, it’s not gonna be okay. It’s not. So bad.”
In an earlier conversation in the show with Shannon Elizabeth, Manigault Newman said “it was so incredibly hard to shoulder what I shouldered in these two years because I was so loyal to a person. I didn’t realize by being loyal to him, it was going to be me losing a hundred other friends.”
She later added: “I’m there fighting, fighting, fighting, getting my head bashed in and nobody coming out publicly to say, ‘We support her.’”
When Keshia Knight Pulliam joined the two women and talked about the hate that the Trump campaign incited, Manigault Newman brought up Pulliam’s relationship with her former co-star Bill Cosby, who she supported during his sexual assault trial.
“When you’re in the middle of the hurricane, it’s hard to see the destruction on the outer bands,” Manigault Newman said. “I can say you stood by somebody that you have known and have been loyal to and have known for a long time who has supported you and people judged you for that. But only you know the inner workings of your relationship with Mr. Cosby. That’s the same thing with me and Mr. Trump. It’s not something that can be minimized.”
Pulliam, who noted in a confessional that she and Manigault Newman couldn’t be “further from polar opposites in terms of our political views,” pointed out that comparing the two is like “comparing apples to oranges.”
“It’s a different situation because this man is running our country and being a voice of a whole country of people,” she said.
But Manigault Newman didn’t back down and pointed out that the black community looked up to the Cosbys. “I will stand firm by that,” she said.
“Please, girl, you see it and the world sees how very similar those two relationships are so I’m certainly not going to sit while you pass judgment on me because I know exactly who I am,” Manigualt Newman expressed in a confessional. “I am looking forward to the next chapter of my life.”
Manigault Newman appeared on The Apprentice with Trump before becoming his director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison. One of the president’s most prominent black supporters, she announced her resignation in December.
Big Brother airs Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, and the three-night premiere event continues with a two-hour live eviction show Friday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.