US president Donald Trump has called his former adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman a "dog".
Manigault Newman has released several audio recordings from her time as an assistant to Trump at the White House, including one with the president in which he said nobody told him she had been fired.
Trump's former TV co-star on The Apprentice also said she has heard audio tape of the president using the N-word.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: "When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn't work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!"
That is a reference to Trump's White House chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, who sacked Manigault Newman in December 2017 in a conversation she viewed as a "threat".
He has also pushed back against Manigault Newman's claim that she had heard an audiotape of him using the N-word.
Trump insisted, "I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have."
He said Manigault Newman had called him "a true Champion of Civil Rights" until she was fired.
Beyond their war of words, the row touched on several sensitive issues in Trump's White House, including a lack of racial diversity among senior officials, security in the executive mansion, a culture that some there feel borders on paranoia and the extraordinary measures used to keep ex-employees quiet.
Australian Associated Press
