What happened to Omarosa is normal, it doesn’t matter, and it’s a darn shame that it’s normal and doesn’t matter. Bureaucratic America permeates every institution, from universities to small Christian congregations to telecommunications companies, even to the White House. They run people around, play dirty tricks, mistreat people of all skin tones, and now it’s coming back to bite them in the hiney.
Omarosa herself is now under the microscope, which lets us see the shameful sham of why her story doesn’t matter. It’s just too normal. Bureaucracy doesn’t attack everyone, but it sure does have its favorites. She seems to be one of them. Chuck Todd kept asking how and why she knew to record her meeting with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. It’s unbelievable for most people, except for bureaucracy’s favorite people to bash. After a while bureaucracy victims get a nose for smelling the rigmarole around the corner. And, they have a knack for attracting trouble, if for no other reason than that bureaucracy doesn’t like bloodhounds sniffing them down.
Here’s how the archetypal scenario could likely play out—not how it actually did, but how it could have if bureaucracy behaves like bureaucracy…
Trump knows that worms in the White House are always trying to control him by controlling the information that gets to him. So, he asks Omarosa to get certain articles for him, going around his bureaucracy. Smelling trouble, she may have taken steps to protect herself, just as she did in recording the conversation, just as she did with giving her loves ones copies of the reported recording of Trump using the “N” word as a precaution just “in case she’s rubbed out” (Esquire). That kind of preemptive-precautionary habit might have led her to violate some rules in the White House, though she would have been acting in defense, not hostility. John Kelly, like the classic bureaucrat he comes across as in the recording, wouldn’t have been out of character to “trump” up, as it were, his firing case against Omarosa, though he wouldn’t have been entirely unjustified either. She was likely a loose canon, which was why Trump wanted her there in the first place, and John Kelly arrived to tie down loose canons. Trump later told her that he “delegated” because he really did delegate. Trump wouldn’t fire the lady himself since he adores her too much—this happens with many administrators because no one likes to fire friends. And, no one likes it when your good friend, the President, lets his chief fire you because you got too cautious on someone else’s watch. Feelings are hurt, it wasn’t meant to be personal, but it was personal. Now, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
…That’s an archetypal speculation of how things may have gone down the hill.
Trump kept things chaotic on purpose so that an old boys’ club couldn’t keep him a prisoner of fame. This was the story on the street when Reince Priebus left. The Left praised John Kelly as the one possible man who might be able to control Trump. When he was first hired, Kelly was hailed by the Left as the savior. Now, when he does what the Left praised him for, it’s all Trump’s fault.
The words Kelly spoke were shamefully typical and ordinary in bureaucratic America, but they don’t make him especially evil. Many, many pastors have been “fretired” through the same conversation in the back office. Coming from the White House raises the stakes, but other than that, the conversation seemed all too typical.
As for the “N” word, one statement doesn’t define a person. It can be sad. But, everyone has said foolish things that they didn’t mean, whether in stupidity or anger. No president will ever be an exception. In the minds of Trumpists, who only grow their numbers, discovering proof that a human is human is no longer a fireable offense.
Omarosa was a way for Trump to get around his own gatekeeper. If Trump doesn’t hire Omarosa back, Kelly could end up “resigning” in the coming months.
The wisest action would be for Trump to have a one-on-one with Omarosa, apologize on a personal level for his own bureaucracy—which every institution in America has, shamefully—, hire her back so that only he has the power to fire her, also keep Kelly on to keep doing his job, and encourage her that she won’t need to guard herself with more recordings and possible “ethics” violations anymore.
And, if he did use the “N” word, he should also say to the country, “Yeah, I did. I was an idiot, really sorry to everyone. Don’t follow my bad example. Let’s all be better and move one.”