Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust (23 page)

“I told them it wasn’t fair to exclude me from being near Michaele,” Tareq said. “I told them, ‘she wants me with her and I want to be there and you’re stopping that from happening.’” According to the Salahis, the more senior of the two executives promised, “on my children’s life,” that Tareq would have a front row seat in the audience at
The View
if they would only change their minds and appear with the others. A staffer from
The View
met them at the studio entrance and confirmed that a front row seat would be waiting for Tareq so Michaele could see a friendly face if her cast mates once again unloaded their wrath upon her. The couple says on the strength of those promises, they went inside. Michaele was escorted into the makeup room and Tareq was told to stand off to the side and toward the back of the studio until it was time for him to be seated.

Before he knew it, the segment was underway and co-host Sherri Shepherd was asking Michaele in reference to the wine tossing incident, “Now your husband Tareq was supposed to be here, but apparently something happened that made the women uncomfortable being around your husband?”

Michaele says she was squinting through the studio lights to scan the front row so she could point out that her husband was there, but of course she couldn’t find him. He maintains he was surrounded in the back by large security guards and could barely see where his wife was sitting. “I should have just yelled out from the back,” Tareq said later, “But that would have just given them more to complain about with me, so I stayed quiet.”

During the live program, and all the give and take between the
Housewives
about who had thrown what kind of drink at whom, Michaele was startled when someone came at her from the left side and placed hands on her back and arm. She glanced up to see Whoopi Goldberg, who told her, “Move on! Move on! Get back to the White House.” It was a command voiced to Michaele, but it should have been directed to Goldberg’s co-host, who had lost control of the interview. Michaele laughed and made a joke of Whoopi’s unorthodox interruption, and the discussion continued.

A new Salahi attorney, Lisa Bloom, says producers at
The View
had been expressly warned not to use the term “White House Party Crashers” on the show. “I consider those terms to be false and defamatory,” Bloom said. “They did not crash the party. They were invited to the party. They have e-mails from the White House listing them as invited.”

Despite that advanced warning, Sherri Shepherd did indeed describe the Salahis as “Crashers” and then blurted out, “I think you guys should be in jail!” According to attorney Bloom, a perfectly timed applause light flashed immediately following that statement. The audience, along with Michaele’s cast mates, all laughed and clapped their approval for the idea.

“I guess Sherri Shepherd knows better than the U.S. attorney what constitutes a crime,” Bloom retorted. “Michaele was very upset about this all day.”

As with so many Salahi controversies, what happened next is in dispute. The Salahis sometimes exaggerate and nearly everyone else tends to think the worst about them. But here is their version:

Tareq said he had been moved to a greenroom/ holding area stage left of the main set to greet his wife after the program. In that room, someone used the term “hit” in recalling how Whoopi Goldberg had laid hands on Michaele. The Salahis say it was a
View
staffer who used the word and not them. If executives at
The View
would comment, they might likely say it was one of the Salahis, but the program remained mum about specific details. So did Bravo executives who were in the room while the scene played out and have since refused comment. Whoever first uttered the word “hit,” that phraseology got back to Whoopi Goldberg—who stormed into the room in an F-bomb tirade.

“I didn’t fucking hit you!” she screamed at Michaele. “Did you say I fucking hit you?” According to the Salahis, Goldberg repeated it over and over. Michaele says she was truly perplexed having just gotten off the show’s set. She stammered, “I - I didn’t say you hit me. I never said that …” Goldberg cut her off and continued the rant. Michaele was finally able to stop her by saying, “Whoopi, bring me the person who told you that I said that. Bring them here to me now.” The Salahis say a staffer was brought forward and admitted, “No, Michaele didn’t use the word, (hit) I did.” When the staffer was calmly asked by Michaele to repeat what she had actually said to her, so Whoopi could fully understand, the young woman said, “You told me Whoopi grabbed your arm, that’s all.”

Tareq, never one to take a confrontation sitting down, fumbled for his cell phone and videotaped the last 38 seconds of the crass talking television personality’s discussion with his wife.

The audio from Tareq’s phone was played on the television show
The Insider
the next night and while at times people in
The View
greenroom were heard talking over each other, it sounds less like a confrontation and more like Michaele was trying to calm the situation. Whoopi’s voice is very distinctly heard off the top:

     Whoopi: “I would never hit you. I would never put my hands on you like that,”

     Michaele: “That’s what I said. You said, ‘Move on!’ And I said ‘Okay.’ That’s what I said.”

     Tareq: “But you shouldn’t have started using foul language….”

     Whoopi: “Listen, that’s me, sir. I’m a foul mouthed person. She knows that…”

     Michaele: “Okay…”

     Tareq: “Well, that’s not fair. At least apologize. That’s not fair.”

     Whoopi: “I’m not apologizing.”

     Unidentified Man: “We have to go….”

     Whoopi: “She knows what I did … She knows what I’m saying…”

     Michaele: “She’s trying to move on….

     Woman (to Tareq): “She doesn’t want her to think that she came and she attacked her.
That was the last thing she wanted her to do.”

     Tareq: “It’s okay…”

     Michaele: “It’s okay….”

The news of the backstage confrontation splashed across the internet in record speed and then it took off media wide. ABC’s publicity department unwittingly fanned the flames when it issued a statement, hours after the event which said, “After the show, Ms. Salahi and her husband accused Whoopi of hitting Ms. Salahi.” Tareq also stoked the fire when he went back the hotel, still rattled by the way Whoopi Goldberg had spoken to his wife, and dashed off a Facebook alert: “Salahis will address on Thursday Morning LIVE on National TV the outrageous abuse and exchange that took place on the ABC Show the View and a audio & video file from Whoopi Goldberg’s verbal attack to Michaele. Standby for details.” There was no Thursday morning appearance on national TV by the Salahis although Michaele did make another appearance with her cast mates. An independent check of a top source at
The Insider
confirms the couple’s assertion that they were not paid for their backstage audio recording.

All the media hoopla caused Whoopi Goldberg to have to respond the next day on
The View,
a program not unfamiliar with second day explanations for their cast member’s on-set altercations. She read a carefully worded script but her body language made it clear there was a whole lot more she’d like to say. The statement said in part, “After the show I was told that Michaele was very upset about what was said about her on the air. And then I was told that she thought I hit her. So I went up to her and I told her that she knew I didn’t hit her… and yeah, you know how I said it (her head bobbed up and down for effect) Choice words…..” Goldberg’s pause got the expected audience reaction. Hoots, laughter and then applause. She continued, “And I make no apology for my choice words. But then her husband got in my face and started taking pictures of me and needless to say I
really
went off then! And there were even more choice-r words. I mean they were so choice you could have taken them, cut them up with a knife and eaten them …” End of statement. There was no corroboration that a
View
staffer was the one who first use the word “hit,” but then again Whoopi did not say either of the Salahis had used it either.

At the end of that tumultuous week, in a rare private moment, Tareq opened up to me about the confrontational incidents leading up to the
Housewives
premiere. I caught him at a time when he was alone in their house. Michaele had gone out for a few hours to pick up hot chocolate and to go grocery shopping.

Tareq began to speak in a way I’d never heard. His eyes were red rimmed, he looked tired and he had a far away contemplative look on his face. Before he spoke, he jammed himself down into a ball, hands tucked between his legs.

“Michaele says I did it because things are spinning out of control. My father is dying and I don’t think my Mom will even tell me when he goes. And then that damn Lynda! She just harps and harps on Michaele …”

His voice trailed off as he thought for a moment about the two people in his life he loved the most. Tareq had been trying to locate his ailing father in various nearby nursing homes with no success and his mother had not been forthcoming about his whereabouts or health. When he learned Dirgham Salahi was back home, Tareq went to see him. With a police escort he was able to get inside, but Michaele was barred by Corinne Salahi. Tareq had written to me about this painful visit just a couple weeks earlier, on July 27
^th
at seven in the evening. It was a wrenching e-mail.

“He is now in a hospital bed in the living room; he is 100% unable to speak and barely can keep his eyes open. I fear and believe his death is imminent … without question before the end of the year. As I sat over his hospital bed in our family home, he did indeed open his eyes and SMILED and was obviously very clear he recognized me. Michaele looked through the sliding glass window doors, for as long as she could until she broke down also. This may be the last time I see him … I hugged him and said personal words into his ear.”

Now, after the wine tossing fiasco, after stomping away from the
Today Show
and the altercation at
The View
, Tareq Salahi opened his soul.

“I wasn’t trying to toss wine on Lynda to be like Clark Gable and simply protect my wife,” he said as he rocked himself back and forth. “Lynda is actually hurting my wife; physically… she’s killing my wife. For anyone who has multiple sclerosis, stress attacks the central nervous system and that affects her health. That’s the only thing that goes through my mind. I see Lynda taking away days and months and years off my wife’s life …” He paused again and took a deep breath that he blew out slowly.

“You know what that does, Diane, but the rest of the world doesn’t know what that does, that she has MS. The pressure and the stress create more plaque around the brain and that eventually takes your life away. So, when I’m in the back room and Whoopi is saying, “Fuck you” and all this “fuck-fuck-fuck” to my wife … of course, I sort of lost it.”

Tareq Salahi apologizes for nothing when it comes to protecting his wife.

Michaele arrived home a short while later, wearing a summer sheath and no makeup. She tossed out her usual, “Hello, Love!” and set down her paper cup of hot chocolate. Even though she was flashing her ever present smile, it was easy to see behind the facade she was exhausted after the long week of publicity and drama. As Tareq turned and walked away into the kitchen I leaned in close and said, “Michaele how are YOU?” She clamped her lips together as her face turned red. Holding back tears she said after a moment, “I’m not feeling too good, Diane.”

“Bravo dis-inviting Tareq to everything really, really puts such a strain on me. I’m all alone without him. I need him.”

I asked if she was symptomatic and all she could do was nod her head yes and then the tears let loose.