Opinion

Grisham, Trump's former spokesman, finally responds

photo_camera United States Capitol in Washington, DC

'I'll take your Questions Now' is the title of the book that will appear this week in the United States, but which has already been previewed by various American media such as The New York Times, Politico and CNN. "The most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House", according to the description of the publisher Harper Collins, which covers the story of Stephanie Grisham, who was President Donald Trump's third press secretary, after the resignation of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, before she herself returned to the service of the then first lady, Melania Trump. 

The author's trait that has stuck in the minds of journalists accredited to the White House is that she has never given a televised question-and-answer appearance. Now, on the other hand, she is so at ease that Trump himself and his inner circle have unleashed a fierce campaign to discredit Grisham, accusing her of having transformed herself into "an angry sourpuss" because of a romantic break-up, and "now being paid by a radical left-wing publishing house to tell lies and falsehoods". 

What Trump will not be able to deny in any case is that Grisham was a privileged witness to his decisions and actions at the helm of the United States, and that she was the recipient of his blunt orders, so much so that his constant rebukes and insults, not only to her but to many of his staff, created a "frightening" atmosphere. 

From the seemingly minor to the more sensitive issues of politics, Grisham spares no detail. For example, she writes that Trump called her from Air Force One to have his press secretary defend the size of his penis, after one of the many women who accused him of improper behaviour and rape, Stormy Daniels, alluded in an interview to the smallness of his masculinity, inversely proportional apparently to that of his screams and expletives. 

When in the Oval Room of the White House he justified himself against the accusations that had been spread by numerous women, Donald Trump showed infinite contempt for them. But it was especially with regard to E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of having raped her in the 1990s, that after insulting her - according to Grisham - he looked her straight in the eyes of his press secretary and ordered her: "You just deny it. That's what you do in every situation, isn't it, Stephanie? You just deny it," he repeated, emphasising the words. 

From conspiracy with the Ukrainian president to "theatre" with Putin 

The author confesses that she always suspected that Trump, sooner or later, would label her "crazy", which is why she justifies never giving a televised report in the year she was in office, and having been his adviser during the 2016 election campaign and head of media relations for the first lady. 

She has no qualms now about describing as "outlandish requests" such orders as her appearing before the press and reconstructing a particular conference call with the Ukrainian president, which led to the first of two impeachments Trump faced. Grisham explains that he managed to avoid it, because "I knew that sooner or later the president would want me to say something in public that wasn't true, or that would make me look crazy". 

Grisham documents Trump's attraction to dictators, though he was especially obsequious to one in particular: Vladimir Putin. 

With all the talk about sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election and various human rights abuses, Trump told Putin: "OK, I'm going to act a little tougher on you for a few minutes. But it's for the cameras, and after you leave, we'll talk. You know what I mean," Grisham writes, recalling a meeting between the two leaders during the G20 summit in Osaka in 2019. 

Of the aides targeted by the president's ire, the one who seems to have suffered most was Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel: "He didn't like being told that the things he wanted to do were unethical or illegal. So he would yell at them. Then he used to listen. And then he would yell at them again". 

The book also deals with the very young daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner, elevated by his father-in-law to the rank of the president's personal special envoy to substantially alter the geopolitical map of the Middle East. Kushner deserves Grisham's epithet 'Rasputin in a tight-fitting suit'.

Like so many other White House officials, Stephanie Grisham left the White House on 6 January 2021, when she witnessed the storming of the Capitol by a horde that had previously been whipped up by Trump himself.