you<u+2019>re a prominent member of donald trump<u+2019>s presidential campaign, as the director of african-american outreach, after competing on <u+201c>the apprentice<u+201d> in 2004. statistically speaking, he does not seem to be having very much success with either women or minorities. oh, my god, i disagree. when i took the position, we were polling at zero. nationally, we<u+2019>re at an average of 8 percent. romney and mccain got around 6 to 7 percent of the african-american vote. our goal is to get 15 to 20 percent of the african-american vote, and we still think that number is possible. i<u+2019>m seeing you guys polling at 2 percent. i<u+2019>ll send you the numbers that i have. do you think the improvement is because of his oft-repeated line, <u+201c>what do you have to lose?<u+201d> you called it exactly what it is: a line. that is not the totality of our engagement. he<u+2019>s actually employed an entire program in order to reach out to the african-american community. he spends a lot of time talking about how terrible things are for black people <u+2014> he has said that if he<u+2019>s elected, black people will <u+201c>be able to walk down the street without getting shot.<u+201d> i assume you, wherever you live, are able to walk down the street without being shot. not necessarily. a lot of people don<u+2019>t remember that you were a political appointee in the clinton administration. i was in al gore<u+2019>s office for a little under a year, and then i moved to the personnel office. i assume you were a democrat then. oh, absolutely. i<u+2019>ve been very vocal about the fact that i had been a democrat my entire life. as an african-american, that<u+2019>s what we tend to do. african-americans are loyal to the democratic party, but unfortunately, the democratic party is not loyal to them. when did you change your mind? my big split really started during the election that involved barack obama and hillary clinton. some of the attack tactics that were used, particularly from the clinton camp <u+2014> at first, i was very much supportive of hillary, until i saw how she was treating this african-american man. i went on to support barack obama and work on his campaign in ohio, but it was then that i saw the fractures in the democratic party, and particularly how they treated president obama. i was really turned off. i understand that disillusionment with the democratic party, but was the choice to, specifically, become a republican made because of donald trump? when donald announced, my decision was to support my friend in his desire to become the president of the united states. we jokingly called ourselves trumplicans at the beginning. for independent-minded voters who want to see a change <u+2014> i mean, even his children were not registered republican. in the last few months, i feel like my eyes have been opened to the need for a greater presence of african-americans in the republican party. or in any party. do you have any policy reasons as to why you changed parties? well, the most obvious is that i believe the republican party lines up much more with my christian beliefs. many african-americans will share in that same platform. recently, donald trump tweeted that he is glad about the unendorsements and the lack of support from the g.o.p., because it unshackles him. what do you think that he might say or do now that he wasn<u+2019>t able to do before? i certainly don<u+2019>t want to purport to speak for him. i think both candidates should be focusing on how they<u+2019>re going to improve the lives of the american people. his focus should certainly be on what he is going to do to help make america great again. do you think he wasn<u+2019>t doing that before? i just can<u+2019>t speculate as to what he purports by that. because, with mr. trump, you know. ... you never know. are you disturbed by what trump said in those tapes? he apologized. he apologized to his family; they accepted his apology, and so do i. interview has been condensed and edited. sign up for our newsletter to get the best of the new york times magazine delivered to your inbox every week. a version of this article appears in print on october 30, 2016, on page mm78 of the sunday magazine with the headline: omarosa manigault changed parties for trump. today's paper | subscribe
omarosa manigault changed parties for trump
ana marie cox