Speaking on MSNBC on Sunday, Omarosa Manigault Newman, President Donald Trump's former friend and White House employee, said White House staff regularly used the hashtag #TFA in private messages whenever the president, known for his thin skin and volatile temper, acted particularly unhinged.
The hashtag refers to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which would allow Vice President Mike Pence along with Trump's cabinet to initiate a process laid out in the Constitution by which they would attempt to remove the president from office.
"We had a little hashtag, #TFA, which, now that I think about it, I'm a little embarrassed to tell you how often; when I went through my text chains from the White House, I saw the hashtag #tfa—25th Amendment,” she said." Manigault Newman told MSNBC’s Alex Witt, adding:
Whenever [Trump] did something that was just so insane and so crazy and unhinged, when he would flip positions from one hour to the next, we’d just hashtag at #tfa and we’d keep moving.
"So it's a hashtag, potentially," Witt responded. "Who would be aware of this?"
"If you work in proximity with Donald Trump and you provide a decision memo for him, then these are individuals who know that something very, very strange is going on with the President of the United States," Manigault Newman replied, "and everyone who works in those positions––that's why the definition of our senior staff is so key––if you have the opportunity to brief him, advise him or provide any guidance to the President of the United States, that person is considered senior staff, and I hate to admit it, but that was kind of the hashtag that went around a lot in the White House."
"And this #TFA: would it be in text? Would it be in emails?" Witt asked.
"I went through my texts very closely," Manigault Newman said, adding that she went through her correspondence "very closely" while preparing to write her book, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House, "and I can tell you it occurred in my text chains with family members, with staffers, with people who were in the agencies more than a hundred times, and I have those text chains and at the time it was kind of a way that we coped but it's not funny, you know, the fact that that was something that was discussed."
Others didn't find it very funny either...
...but Manigault Newman's admission did cause #TFA to trend on Twitter, in turn intensifying calls for the president's impeachment.
Manigault Newman's admission comes amid a whirlwind week for the Trump administration. The publication of anonymous op-ed, titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” has caused Trump to lash out in search of the writer, who wrote:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The op-ed's publication prompted Trump to ask––and not for the first time––if the New York Times "will investigate themselves - who is the anonymous letter writer?"
But the Times doesn't need to do any investigation: The Times knows the author's identity and, keeping with journalistic principles, has protected the identity of their source. The Times notes this at the top of the op-ed, which was published September 5:
The Times is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.
In addition to Manigault Newman's reveal of the #TFA hashtag, she released another secret audio recording she made while working in the White House.
On the recording, which was made in October of last year and introduced by Manigault Newman during an appearance on The View, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders can be heard agreeing with Trump that the "real" Russia investigation should be focused on Hillary Clinton.
“When Donald Trump got bored, which was very often because his attention span was very short, he would sometimes try to figure out what meetings were taking place in the White House and he would crash those meetings,” Manigault Newman explained before the recording played on air, adding that Trump was "still talking about Hillary Clinton."
“I think Hillary is getting killed now with Russia. The real Russia story is Hillary and collusion,” says Trump on the recording before arguing that the Clinton campaign committed an illegal campaign finance violation by allegedly spending $9 million on a report to prove he had colluded with Russia.
Trump receives affirmation from his former Communications Director Hope Hicks before turning to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and asking, “So the whole Russia thing I think seems to have turned around, what do you think, Sarah?”
"Absolutely," Sanders replies.
Manigault Newman has unveiled several recordings from time in the White House, including one she made of John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, as he fired her in the Situation Room.
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