Omarosa backs Harris: Trump losing 'to a woman of color would be devastating to his ego'

Omarosa Manigault Newman, who rose to mononymous fame as a contestant on "The Apprentice" before joining former President Trump's administration, says she's "100 percent endorsing Kamala Harris for president."

"Donald Trump squandered the greatest opportunity he had in his life to be a consequential leader, to shape the direction of our nation and bend it toward something positive," Newman said in an interview with Variety published Monday. 

"He opted to go to the dark side," Newman said of Trump.

Newman, who appeared in 2004 on the first season of "The Apprentice," hosted at the time by then-New York real estate developer Trump, worked on his 2016 presidential campaign. She joined the Trump White House as its director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison before breaking with him in 2017 and penning a tell-all book the next year. 

Trump sued Newman over the book, claiming she had violated a nondisclosure agreement. His campaign was ordered to pay $1.3 million in legal frees to Newman in 2022. 

In the interview with Variety, Newman pushed back on Trump's nickname, "Teflon Don," citing the results of the 2020 presidential race.

"I wouldn’t call losing an election Teflon. Joe Biden is the president," she said. 

"Donald Trump has been defeated before, and I think what’s grating on his nerves the most is that this [next] defeat may come at the hands of a woman of color. He reserves his most vitriolic attacks for women of color," Newman said of Trump's race against Vice President Harris. 

"To lose to a woman of color would be devastating to his ego," she said. 

Newman said if Harris — who's the country's first Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president — were to win next month's election, it would mark a "significant milestone" for the author and reality TV star "on a very personal level."

The potential win "would be a tremendous, seismic movement for little girls and little Black boys," she said of Harris potentially becoming the first woman to serve as commander in chief. 

"But to get this close is still so significant. I believe the nation will choose the leader they need at this time, and I believe that that leader is Vice President Kamala Harris," Newman said.