'Disgraced' Omarosa 'Peddling Lies for Profit' by Claiming Trump Calls Betsy DeVos 'Ditzy,' Says Education Department

The Department of Education struck back Wednesday against fired White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman's claim that President Donald Trump called Education Secretary Betsy DeVos "ditzy" behind her back.

In a statement to Newsweek Wednesday, the department accused this "disgraced former White House employee of peddling lies for profit. The book is a joke as are the false claims she's making about Secretary DeVos," said Department of Education press secretary Liz Hill.

In her new tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House, released Tuesday, the former White House aide and Apprentice star claimed the president had nicknames for multiple administration officials, including DeVos, whomManigault Newman alleged Trump called "Ditzy DeVos" after she left a room.

"He talked about all of the people around him. For instance, he would call Betsy DeVos 'Ditzy DeVos,'" Manigault Newman told MSNBC's Katy Tur Tuesday. "Because of his small ability to communicate, he would give them these derogatory nicknames, and it just wasn't appropriate."

"He does treat women differently, I think as evidenced by the lack of female appointees in his administration," Manigault Newman added.

She also claimed that DeVos suggested students at Florida's Bethune-Cookman University, a predominantly black university, were too stupid to understand what she was attempting to do as education secretary.

"They don't have the capacity to understand what we're trying to accomplish," DeVos allegedly told Manigault Newman after DeVos was booed as she addressed hundreds of students and their families at the graduation ceremoney in May 2017. Many students stood up and turned their backs on the education secretary in protest.

With the release of her new book and its numerous allegations against the president and his administration, several former and current White House officials have come forward to deny Manigault Newman's claims. The most repudiated claim surrounds her allegation that Trump was a "racist" who used the "n-word" while filming his reality TV show The Apprentice years ago.

A Trump campaign official confirmed to Newsweek Tuesday that the president's campaign had hit Manigault Newman with an arbitration action over claims she breached a 2016 nondisclosure agreement with Trump's 2016 campaign. After she was fired in December 2017 as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, Manigault Newman said in her book that she declined a $15,000 a month diversity outreach consulting position she claimed was offered as hush money by the Trump campaign.

Manigault Newman has continued to say she never signed an NDA when she joined the White House, but a Trump campaign official said she would be held accountable for the 2016 agreement nonetheless.

While a tape has not yet surfaced of the president using the racial slur, Manigault Newman has released other audio recordings of White House conversations that she had secretly taped. They include a conversation with Trump campaign aides apparently discussing how to spin the fallout of Trump using the "n-word" if such a tape existed of him using it and if the tape was released, and Manigault Newman's conversation with White House chief of staff John Kelly when he fired her.