Trump’s ‘terrifying’ temper detailed in upcoming book
WASHINGTON — Stephanie Grisham, the former Trump White House press secretary perhaps best known for never holding a televised briefing with reporters, plans to release a tell-all book next week that accuses President Donald Trump of abusing his staff, placating dictators like Vladimir Putin of Russia, and making sexual comments about a young White House aide.
In her book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” Grisham recalls her time working for a president she said constantly berated her and made outlandish requests, including a demand that she appear before the press corps and re-enact a call with the Ukrainian president that led to Trump’s first impeachment, an assignment she managed to avoid.
“I knew that sooner or later the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic,” Grisham writes, explaining why she never held a briefing.
She also describes his anger toward her and others as “terrifying.”
“When I began to see how his temper wasn’t just for shock value or the cameras,” she writes, “I began to regret my decision to go to the West Wing.”
After serving as press secretary, Grisham worked in first lady Melania Trump’s office. She resigned Jan. 6 as a horde of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Her publisher, HarperCollins, calls the book “the most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House yet.”
The former president and his advisers already have moved to discredit Grisham’s account.
“Stephanie didn’t have what it takes, and that was obvious from the beginning,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday. He accused her of becoming “very angry and bitter” after a breakup.
“She had big problems, and we felt that she should work out those problems for herself. Now, like everyone else, she gets paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”
In her book, Grisham lands on a well-documented theme when she explores Trump’s love of dictators. But she says Trump went out of his way to please one in particular: Putin, whose cold reception of Trump, she writes, seemed to make the president want to impress him even more.
“With all the talk of sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election and for various human rights abuses, Trump told Putin, ‘OK, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave we’ll talk. You understand,’ ” Grisham writes, recalling a meeting between the two leaders during the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in 2019.
Grishman said that while he was in the White House, Trump’s targets for abuse included a young press aide he repeatedly invited up to his Air Force One cabin, including once to “look at her,” using an expletive to describe her rear end. Trump, she writes, instructed her to promote the woman and “keep her happy.” Instead, Grisham said she tried to keep her away from the president.