The White House press secretary says she "can't guarantee" that there are no tape recordings of President Trump making racist comments about black Americans.
But Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that she has never personally heard him use the "N"-word.
The claim that tapes exist has been made by a jilted former White House staffer, who first met President Trump on the set of his television show "The Apprentice".
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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We have reached the point in the Trump Presidency where his own Press Secretary, the beleaguered Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is unable to say definitively that the President has never used that most derogatory word of all to describe black Americans.
Time and again she was asked at the White House press briefing to say that are there are no circumstances under which Americans will ever get to hear their President using the N-word.
She couldn't say that he's never been recorded saying it.
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That, of course, remains to be tested….and might be tested if any tape emerges.
The notion that tapes are out there is being fueled by Omarosa Maginault Newman….a former top aide to the President whose journey to the Oval Office began on the set of his TV show "The Apprentice".
That she was ever allowed within the walls of the White House….much less at the President's side….bemused long-time observers of Washington who did not realize, at the start of this soap opera administration, that reality TV stars were eligible for one hundred and eighty thousand dollar a year taxpayer-funded positions within the country's executive branch.
Months after she was appointed, the President's Chief of Staff, John Kelly, realized she had to go.
He did not realize she was taping the conversation in which she was fired.
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That tape, she insists in a new memoir, is merely the tip of the iceberg.
The Trump campaign is now suing her for breach of a non-disclosure agreement it claims she signed when she left the White House.
But President Trump - who referred to her on Twitter as a "lowlife" and a "dog" - is realizing there is no fury like that of a White House aide scorned.
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Nor she insists for African Americans more generally.
She's telling every interviewer in town that her former boss should now be impeached.
The White House is in panic mode….insisting that President Trump is no racist and - said his spokeswoman - is all about equal opportunity when it comes to lambasting his critics.
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And so it goes on….day after day….the White House sullied by a slew of interactions that one political veteran here suggested would be more at home on the Jerry Springer Show than in the people's house.
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