Secretly recorded by fired white house staffer Omarosa Manigault newman. The first capturing the moment chief of staff john kelly let her go inside the situation room. Can i ask you a couple of questions. Is the president aware lets not go down the road. This is a nonnegotiable discussion. This is my departure. I would like to have an opportunity to understand and this morning she released another. Again recorded in secret. This one of the president reacting to her firing. Before you hear it, youll note that nbc news has not heard the full recording, so we cannot account for what came before or after this. Omarosa, whats going on . I just saw on the news that you are thinking about leaving. What happened . General kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave. No, nobody even told me about it. Nobody you know, they run a big operation, but i didnt know it. I didnt know that. Yeah. Damn it. I dont love you leaving at all. According to omarosa, she has more. Do you have more recordings . Oh, absolutely. Are you planning on releasing them . I dont know. I am going to watch to see. They have been threatening legal action. They are trying to figure out how to stop me. They are trying to penalize me because i would not accept a 15,000 a month deal that they offered for a fake job on the Trump Campaign. So im expecting they are going to retaliate. So im just going to stand back and wait. We are again talking about secret tapes and threats of more to come. If you are asking yourself, havent we been here before . Yes. Yes, we have. When will you tell us about the a fairly short period of time. Are there tapes, sir . You are going to be disappointed when you hear the answer. I spoke to alan about it. When it comes time for the financing what financing . We will have to pay someone. No, no, no, no. I got this. That does not include the other problematic recordings that may or may not exist. The alleged tape from the set of the apprentice or the mysterious dossier tape. It also doesnt include the recordings we do know exist like the access Hollywood Tape. Of course, hot mics are different from secret recordings, but still. Our big question this hour, why do people find it necessary to secretly tape donald trump . Joining me now White House Reporter geoff bennett, ashley parker, Washington PostWhite House Reporter, and msnbc political analyst, ken vogel, New York Times political reporter, and msnbc contributor chris winnable, author of the gatekeepers, how the white house chiefs of staff define ever presidency. Jeff, what is the latest reaction from the white house, and what do they think of this idea that omarosa still has more tapes she may or may not release . We have seen the white house take steps over the past few days to discredit omarosa, to disavow her book. Just today the White House Press secretary suggests that omarosas apparent surreptitious recording of the chief of staff represented a serious ethical and security breach. While many people could have a hard time arguing with that, it really comes back to the question of the president s judgment. When omarosa joined the white house in january of 2017 she was a known quantity. Her apparent credibility issues were no secret yet she was giving a highprofile, highpaying job. Its also the president s hiring of mike flynn, of carter page, of Paul Manafort, of rick gates, george papadopoulos, the list goes on. The president said, why did i keep her on . Because at the time she had nis nice things to say about me. That runs parallel to what the president said about scott pruitt who stayed on the job for months after ethics scandals kept mounting. It was because President Trump liked him personally. There is a Common Thread here. If you flatter the president , you go far. Ken, your colleague maggie haber man wrote a story with katy rogers about how someone was secretly taping donald trump at the white house. She said it was not omarosa opening up to the possibility that others are still doing the same within the white house. What is the deal with people needing or feeling the need to record donald trump . Michael cohen recorded him. Omarosa recorded him. There could be somebody else in the white house recording him. I know there are folks out there who have reported on donald trump who have been worried in private conversations that he would take that conversation and twist it. Twist it because, to whatever purpose he wanted that conversation to suit him. You look at the conversation that your publisher had with him about the Fake News Media and enemy of the people. Donald trump went out and seemed to skew the content of that conversation, which was contrary to what suls berger was saying. Its quite telling that people who know donald trump best and spend the most time with donald trump are those who are most distrustful of him and distrustful that he will return the loyalty that he expects from people who work for him. And you see a real culture of that, where Michael Cohen is not just taping trump. He is taping reporters. He told me at one point he had been monitoring my communications with other people on the campaign, and that is a cultural issue. From trumps perspective, however, the reason this is inflaming him, this the omarosa story is inflaming him so much, it plays into two sensitivities. Number one, the idea that people should be loyal to him, particularly those who he made, like Michael Cohen, like omarosa in his mind he created them. Number two is he doesnt like anyone to sort of make money off of him, and thats what omarosa is doing with this book. Making money off her time in the white house. Thats why we see such an extreme pushback from trump on omarosa. Its not just these tapes that omarosa made or the tapes that Michael Cohen made. There are tapes of donald trump on a hot mic like the access Hollywood Tape that got him into trouble. There is stuttering john that could get the howard stern character, that could get through to donald trump while he was on air force one. There are reports, ashley, you have seen these, of donald trump using his unsecured phone despite being told not to. Still using that phone. There were russians in the oval office. There are Security Issues that seem to plague this white house, not to mention the staff secretary having allegations of abusing his wives and the white house ignoring those. Well, i think the key thing to keep in mind is that, like so much of what happens in this white house, this is a culture that starts at the top. President trump, before he was president , he always and its unclear exactly how much he did this or used it as a threat, but was known, true or untrue, taping conversations. The irony here is now you have all of these people in his orbit actually doing the thing that they believe their boss did, and now using it against him. And when you have a culture where you hire people who, as he tweeted today, maybe are not particularly well liked, are not particularly qualified but they have said nice things to him and you allow them to behave in an unprofessional way, whether thats leaving your shoes all over the west wing, wandering into meetings you are not invited to or bringing a recording device into the situation room, an atmosphere of nonprofessionalism p nonprofessional pervaids. Here is omarosa why she thinks the president also taped people. Do you think the president is taping people . Absolutely. The president talks often about how important it was to tape your enemies and to make sure that you have information on your enemies. So you think he is actually taping people inside the white house . He threatened comey. We have to take him at his own words. He said to comey, you better watch out because he insinuated there might be tapeings. The Security Issues here, chris, are pervasive. We had ned price, former National Security spokesperson for the Obama Administration, i have never heard of a more serious breach of protocol, not only is it not typical, Something Like this is unprecedented. John kelly fired omarosa in the situation room, an hr person seemed to be brought into the situation room. Omarosa could record in the situation room. It seems like whatever you have to whenever you think about omarosa, this is very telling about how this white house is run and how john kelly is running this white house. This is not a normal thing in any white house. Weve seep a lot of abnormal things in this white house. Its a security protocol problem, obviously, as ned price said earlier for john kelly. I guess the honor system in the Trump White House is, guess what . Not very effective when it comes to recording in the situation room. But having said that, you know, i have been very tough on john kelly. I dont think there is much substance to these tapes, quite frankly. I dont think kelly said anything that was terribly wrong. Is it a normal procedure to fire somebody in the situation room . No. I think he was probably looking for a private place to do it. He didnt realize he was being taped. So that blew up in his face. Having said that, i think the only thing kelly did wrong here was really not having fired omarosa back on day one. I think she probably should have been shown the exit with scaramucci during the first week. In the highest levels of the white house they were expecting she would flunk her fbi test. That didnt happen. But the real mystery is why john kelly didnt fire her a long time ago in a white house full of people who are unqualified. She was in her own league. She was nothing but trouble. Its kind of a surprise she lasted as long as she did. Jeff, any new protocols Going Forward at the white house . Are they going to start taking phones before people enter the oval office or enter the situation room . Well, we havent heard how they intend to respond any differently now that omarosa is making these allegations. Some weeks ago, maybe some months ago now, there was a plan in place where they were checking for people having phones in private white house meetings, and there were descriptions of secret service staffers Walking Around with devices that could detect phones where they shouldnt be. To answer the question, mr. Whipple asked rhetorically about why she stayed on so long, its worth pointing out that omarosa had a wellknown role to play in the white house, and it was that her role was to defend the sometimes indefensible. Whenever the president was pushed into a corner on issues of race, whether it be things that he said or things that he responded to, she was often alongside ben carson, the hud secretary, they were trotted out to the public to show, to give a public face that the president was on the right side with black folks, katy, to be completely honest. The same thing with Michael Cohen, who do you believe more or who do you trust more or who is more trustworthy than the other . You have donald trump, who has the Washington Post, as recorded, told 4,000 lies since he has taken the oval office. Then omarosa who contradicted herself about whats in the book on the first day she goes out promoting the book, saying she had only heard rumors of a tape where the president used the nword and then saying she, herself, had heard that tape. Who do you believe more in this situation . The answer is that no one is trustworthy. But thats more of a problem for this white house. And anyone who covered this white house knows that omarosa does not have a ton of credibility. You knew that from your reporting early on, and its lear clear in the way her book has been rolled out. That said, she does have these tapes, and the tapes back up some of the quotes in her book, and that cant be discounted. She sort of brought receipts. The problem with this white house is they have no they have a credibility problem. A lot of that is selfinflicted. And so they are in no position to push back credibly on anything regardless of how outlandish it is. Another issue is they are sort of trying to discredit her and saying how can you trust her. Some of that may be true, but this was the white house. Again, it was at the direction of the president. So you do have some staff having to go out and defend a decision they didnt like. A lot of the staff wanted her gone early on. But she was in the white house. She had a senior position. She was in a position to record the president and to record the chief of staff and to record other meetings. So they sort of empowered her to be an unreliable narrater, and now they have to deal with that. In a credibility contest with almost anyone walking the face of the earth, donald trump loses. In a credibility contest with omarosa, he may very well win. And every minute we spend devoting air time to the omarosa trump feud plays into the trump reelection handbook. You think so . He knows he can win that fight. Why . I am not saying its that well thought or that premeditated. But when you think about all the other issues and scandals of the trump presidency, this is a rabbit hole he would happily have us crawl down. He wants to paint himself as the victim shh. Absolutely. And there is another private conversation, a twohour conversation, for which there may or may not be an audiotape. That was the meeting between Vladimir Putin and donald trump in helsinki. I spoke to a former cia director who says if it had happened on his watch, he would have made damn sure, in his words, that he got an audio recording of that conversation. We still dont know what happened in that conversation and its way more important than anything he ever said to omarosa. 100 . I dont disagree with you at all. That is something that im sure we will talk about again. I do think whats important about the omarosa story is it shows how things are done at this white house. Its just another piece of evidence of how little credibility people have there and how cavalierly they treat security, National Security. How cavalierly aides can tape the president of the United States. And it also shows the way that donald trump hires. And that is important. Thats true. I think every minute we spend, the mainstream media, quote unquote, spends using omarosa as a club with which to beat donald trump, i think a lot of people, and into the just his base, look at us and say, well, there they go again. Anything they can . Anything they can use to beat on donald trump. When you say Sarah Huckabee sanders says no, or kellyanne conway, whoever it was, when someone says no one listens to omarosa in the white house, now she has written a book about the president , all of a sudden you want to hear from her . I am not saying dont not cover it, but have some perspective because we have already stopped talking about the really important things. I have no doubt we will Start Talking about them again very soon. Chris whipple, thank you for being our conscience and our perspective. We appreciate it. Ashley parker, ken vogel, and jen bennett, thank you very much as with. Red flags and loud gongs. My next guest says read between the lines of the manafort trial and there might be a whole lot more there. Or break a trip. And at expedia, we dont think you should be rushed into booking one. Thats why we created expedias addon advantage. Now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. Addon advantage. Discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. Only when you book with expedia. It was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. To do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. To fight cancer. And never lose sight of the patients were fighting for. Our Cancer Treatment specialists share the same vision. 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Last hour in virginia, prosecutors kicked off week three of Paul Manaforts trial on bank and tax fraud charges. The prosecution could rest its case as early as today. The former Trump Campaign chair faces 18 counts in all. In found guilty, manafort could be sent to prison for the rest of his life. This trial isnt necessarily about the overall russia probe, but its offering clues about the direction Robert Mueller and his team could be going. Red flags and loud gongs, as my next guest puts it. Lets welcome gene rossi, a former federal prosecutor. He has tried cases before judge t. S. Ellis. He monitor and ken dilanian National Security reporter outside the courthouse for us in virginia. Ken, first to you. Whats the latest . I just stepped out of the courtroom where testimony has been underway for about an hour. Extremely devastating testimony, the kind of testimony where you are wondering, why is Paul Manafort sitting through this . Its overwhelming. A Vice President of federal savings bank, james brennan, testified about those 60 million