| | | | By now, Omarosa Manigault Newman's book "should" be the #1 best-selling book in the country. Right? She betrayed President Trump, called him a racist and questioned his mental health. She said he is "not well." She shared secret tapes from the White House on national TV. She said he should be impeached. She earned a presidential rebuke just like Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" did. But she hasn't enjoyed the same # of pre-orders.
Wolff's book became a runaway bestseller back in January. There were so many pre-orders, Macmillan struggled to keep pace. It was a great problem to have! Suffice it to say, the publisher of Omarosa's book, Simon & Schuster, has not had that same problem. On Monday, "Unhinged" finally cracked the top 10 on Amazon, but it is stuck at #5 at the moment, behind a book about the ketogenic diet and several others. On the Barnes & Noble website, it is #18. First, lemme put that into context. Then let's dig into why it's not #1...
| | Wolff hit #1 on the online charts when "Fire and Fury" leaked, and the book stayed there for weeks. More recently, several other Trumpy books have topped the charts. Two of his Fox News boosters, Jeanine Pirro and Gregg Jarrett, hit #1 with their respective books last month. Weeks after launch, Jarrett is still in the top 10. On the other end of the spectrum, Rick Wilson's contribution to the resistance, "Everything Trump Touches Dies," peaked at #2 last week. Wilson had plenty of cable TV hits to plug his book, but he had nowhere NEAR the rollout that Omarosa has had. She has been soaking up press for four straight days. She has been on two of NBC's flagship programs, plus multiple MSNBC shows. She has been "trending." So what gives?
| | As I said last night, I think Omarosa's book is a big deal. Any burn-the-house-down tell-all by a former W.H. staffer is a big deal. But parts of her book are simply unbelievable. There are basic mistakes and misstatements. So here are a few theories about the sluggish sales:
-- Minds are made up. Wolff's book was somewhat novel. It spurred serious conversations about Trump's fitness for office. People already had strong opinions about Trump back then, but opinions have hardened in the seven months since then... And there's more "Trump fatigue" now...
-- Omarosa doesn't have "fans." Yes, she is very well known. But not well liked. Her brand is about backstabbing, cheating, alienation. As Tyrus said on Fox Monday afternoon, "Omarosa is the most despised person in the free world." She doesn't have fans, she has haters. And haters don't spend $25 on a book...
-- She doesn't have credibility. Trump tweeted on Monday morning that the "fake news media" will be "working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible." Far from it. Her past support for Trump and her other credibility problems have come up in practically every story and TV segment. Aside from the tapes, people have few reasons to believe her account...
--> BTW: Some of these factors also apply to Sean Spicer's book "The Briefing," which suffered underwhelming sales last month...
| | Trump's tweets did give her a boost... | | This was a phenomenon that we all previously saw with Wolff's book and with James Comey's book: Mean tweets from President Trump goose sales.
On Sunday night, "Unhinged" was #17 on Amazon. On Monday morning, after Trump let loose, the book started climbing. I have no doubt that her "Today" show appearance helped with sales too. But the Trump tweets generated more news coverage and curiosity which in turn generated more pre-orders. Trump tried out a nickname for her -- "Wacky Omarosa" -- but so far it hasn't seemed to stick...
| | As Kaitlan Collins said on "CNN Tonight," this is a presidential first: Trump spent part of Monday night denying that he has ever uttered the N-word. "I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have," he said, refuting Omarosa's claim about the existence of tapes.
Trump said that "Apprentice" boss Mark Burnett "called" to say there's no such tape. I reached out to Burnett, but didn't immediately hear back... | | What's next on the TV tour | | Simon & Schuster is a division of CBS Corporation, so "Unhinged" is a CBS product, but NBC offered the better "package" -- meaning, NBC promised her "Meet the Press," then "Today," then MSNBC. I think it made since, given Omarosa's history on NBC's "Apprentice." Savannah Guthrie shined during the "Today" interview -- even after Omarosa told her to "calm down," and even after O claimed she had to leave for another interview -- Guthrie nailed the final Q, asking, "The book is called Unhinged…who does that refer to?"
Later in the day, O was on MSNBC's "Velshi & Ruhle" and "Hardball..." Plus the PBS "NewsHour..." On Tuesday, she'll be on "CBS This Morning," Katy Tur's MSNBC program, and "The Daily Show." Let's see where she is on Amazon's best sellers list this time tomorrow...
| | Apart from sales, Omarosa may be achieving other goals. If she really does believe Trump is unfit to be president, she's providing some more data points for the public. She says she has more tapes. On "Today," She said, "there's a lot of very corrupt things that are happening in the White House, and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of this." On "Hardball," she implied that Robert Mueller's investigators had been in touch with her, saying, "If this office calls again, anything they want to see, I'll share."
But I'm hesitant to even share that quote because... again... her past lies and deceptions have come back to haunt her. If somebody tries to blow the whistle, but nobody believes the sound, are they really a whistleblower?
To be fair, Omarosa's book has accomplished a few things already... She has provoked newfound scrutiny into several subjects... Let's tick through them:
| | Headlines prompted by Omarosa... | | -- "Trump appeared to acknowledge on Monday something his aides have declined to confirm for months: that his White House had aides sign nondisclosure agreements," NYT's Maggie Haberman writes. "The president made the statement in a post on Twitter about Omarosa..."
-- Jeremy Diamond's latest for CNN.com: "None of President Donald Trump's senior White House officials are black. Only a handful of his senior staff are of Latino, Asian or Arab descent, according to a CNN review of 48 senior White House officials. Instead, the President is being advised by a senior White House staff that is overwhelmingly white..."
-- CNN.com's big headline on Monday night: "White House paranoia deepens." Kevin Liptak says "aides are wondering who else might be using a recording device..."
-- When POTUS returned to the W.H. on Monday night, one of the shouted questions from the press pool was, "Have you ever used the n-word?" He did not respond to any of the Q's...
| | | David Axelrod tweeted: "Everyone says the @realDonaldTrump WH is like reality TV. But it feels more like the Jerry Springer Show, with unsympathetic, estranged friends and relatives learning of betrayals, throwing punches and chairs at each other..." | | -- Since POTUS didn't mention John McCain while signing the "John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act" on Monday, CNN's Jake Tapper did: "Since President Trump would not do it, let us here on 'The Lead' congratulate Senator John McCain and his family and thank him for his service to the country..." (Mediaite)
-- At that signing ceremony, POTUS patted himself on the back for not calling the press corps "fake." He said "I'm so proud of myself... I said to myself, I will not today in front of our great armed forces call them fake news..." (Contemptor)
-- Later in the day, at a fund-raiser that was unexpectedly open to cameras, Trump called fact-checkers "bad people" and complained about WaPo's Pinocchios... (Twitter)
-- Chris Cuomo keeps getting exclusives: On Monday night he interviewed "Manhattan Madam" Kristin Davis, a confidant of Roger Stone's, about her recent testimony to the grand jury in Mueller's probe... (Twitter) | | Update on Thursday's editorial campaign | | | "We just passed the 200 mark," the Boston Globe's Marjorie Pritchard told me Monday night. That means more than 200 papers are planning to run editorials decrying Trump's anti-media attacks. Now some TV stations may be joining the effort, too. The RTDNA, which has 1,200 TV and digital members, called on members to participate in a Monday afternoon memo... | | Will TV stations really join in? | | | NYU's Jay Rosen emails: "Put me down as a skeptic that very many — if any — TV stations will join in the criticism of President Trump Thursday. Vaguely worded statements about the glories of the First Amendment that fail to mention his attacks do not count. If I am wrong, I am happy to admit so publicly." | | That is, every politician in the TV age needs an executive producer. Dylan Byers wrote about Bill Shine's role as Trump's EP in Monday's PACIFIC. "Trump's 2020 challengers will need their own EP's who know how to counter-program..." (PACIFIC)
>> Speaking of Shine: The W.H. has exempted Shine and former CNBCer Larry Kudlow from "federal ethics laws" so they can meet with their former employers, The Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay scooped... | | Meet the Indiana dad who hunts Russian trolls | | | Donie O'Sullivan emails: Those of us who have been working to identify Russian trolls posing as Americans have come to know a man named Josh Emerson. A systems analyst at Indiana University and dad of two by day, at night he scours the web identifying potential Russian operations targeted at America. Josh is an open-source researcher, so he posts all his findings online and it's proven to be an invaluable resource for people on this beat! Read on... | | -- Maybe the most important read of the day: Matthew Ball's two-part treatise (his word) about the future of HBO... (REDEF)
-- Netflix CFO David Wells is stepping down... He says he wants to focus on philanthropy... Netflix says it'll consider internal and external candidates for the job... (Variety)
-- Paul R. La Monica's latest: "Look out Apple! Amazon may soon be worth $1 trillion too..." (CNNMoney)
-- Today in acqui-hires: "Facebook buys Vidpresso's team and tech to make video interactive..." (TechCrunch) | | YouTube offering talent $$ for this... | | | Nice work if you can get it! YouTube is paying talent "upfront sums to use and promote new features, including paid memberships and an enhanced chat," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports, citing sources. "The amounts range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars." The context, of course: Intensifying competition from Facebook, Twitch, etc... | | "Colbert Says There Was No Pushback From CBS for Discussing Les Moonves on Late Show" | | That's the headline from Vulture's Megh Wright. On Andy Cohen's show Sunday night, Stephen Colbert "was asked if there was any resistance from CBS," and Colbert said, "As soon as I heard the article came out, I knew that I'd have to talk about it on Monday night because we talk about everything. That's kind of all I worked on that Monday was what I wanted to say, and about a half an hour before we taped we told CBS. We said 'We're gonna do this, and we're going to do this.' And there was no pushback. Nobody said a damn thing."
And that's the way it should be... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Hands down the best story of the day: Caleb Ecarma discovered that Sebastian Gorka has been handing out fake Fox News business cards... They're not even "good" fakes... (Mediaite)
-- On Monday, NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik and ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen both examined last Friday's "Morning Edition" interview with a hate group leader... (NPR)
-- ICYMI: Supreme took over front AND back covers of the NYPost on Monday... And the paper quickly became a collector's item... (The Cut)
-- Ozy Media is "forming an in-house production studio," doubling the size of its video team... (The Wrap)
-- Monday night on "Jimmy Kimmel Live:" Wolf Blitzer! | | | CNN's latest reporting: "A source close to Aretha Franklin tells CNN's Don Lemon the 76-year-old singer is in hospice care at her home..." | | "Is Netflix the new king of stand-up comedy?" | | | The streaming service is "producing specials at an astronomical rate, while HBO, Comedy Central and Showtime are dialing back." Read Allen Kim's full story for CNN.com here... | | "Sabrina" reboot looks chilling | | | Chloe Melas emails: It's "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" like you've never seen her before in a "chilling" new Netflix series... The show isn't out until Oct. 26, but Netflix released the first images from the production on Monday... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Chris Hardwick had a tearful return to "Talking Dead" on Sunday night...
-- Kanye West has explained his silence after Jimmy Kimmel asked him that Trump question...
-- Here's a list of all the winners at the Teen Choice Awards 2018... | | How to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | Here's my essay from Sunday's show... It's all about how Trump reflects what his pro-Trump media boosters are saying, and vice versa... | | My interview with Bill de Blasio | | Rupert Murdoch's media empire props up President Trump, creates hatred, and tries to "stir the most negative impulses in this country," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says.
The mayor was my guest on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." I told him I think that "politicians make lousy media critics," and asked, "Why do you feel it's your role to be calling out a newspaper because you don't like the content?"
"Because I think it's not happening enough," de Blasio answered. The back and forth continued... CNNMoney's Jackie Wattles wrote up the interview... And here's the full video... | | |
Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback... See you tomorrow...
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