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A newly published collection of excerpts from Stephanie Grisham’s new book claims Melania Trump’s relationship with Donald Trump became increasingly frigid over the years as scandal and controversy bogged down her husband’s presidency.
Washington Post obtained an early look at Grisham’s upcoming memoir I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw in The Trump White House. The tell-all from the Trump White House Press Secretary is poised to reveal a load of scandalous details, but the bulk of it seems to focus on what Grisham recalls as Mrs. Trump’s chief of staff.
As Grisham outlines how Mrs. Trump stayed out of the spotlight, she says that Melania was “unleashed” by the revelation of her husband’s alleged liaison with porn star Stormy Daniels. By Grisham’s account, the scandal caused Mrs. Trump to start publicly embarrassing her husband by ignoring or outright contradicting him.
From the Post:
She walked into his first State of the Union address arm-in-arm with a handsome
military aide Grisham had hand-selected because, Melania said, the floors of the Capitol were too slippery.“I laughed to myself because I’d seen the woman navigate dirt roads in her heels,” Grisham writes. And when Grisham drafted a tweet for Melania requesting privacy, saying she was concentrating on being a mother, wife and first lady, she had Grisham remove the word “wife.”What the scandal didn’t unleash was an emotional reaction. Grisham wrote that Melania Trump didn’t believe her husband’s denials of the affair, but essentially shrugged it all off:“This is Donald’s problem. He got himself into this mess. He can fix it by himself.”By the end of the administration, Grisham writes, the first lady was so checked out that she slept through election night, as hundreds gathered in the White House for a party Melania had strenuously objected to — given the potential for another coronavirus outbreak at the White House.
Grisham reportedly also devoted a whole chapter of her book to the controversy that erupted when Mrs. Trump wore a jacket that said “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” while visiting the U.S. southern border.
The Post’s write-up says Mrs. Trump was “upset by the situation her husband’s immigration policies had caused and wanted to see it for herself.” Grisham was too preoccupied to stop the first lady from wearing the jacket, but when she realized the situation later, the two of
That, inevitably, led Trump to summon his wife to the Oval Office.
It was the first time he’d ever summoned her in such a way in front of staff. He yelled and asked “what the [expletive]” they thought they were doing. Then just as quickly he came up with a solution. He would tweet out that the jacket was a message to the Fake News Media.It’s the story that the first lady repeated four months later in her first and only televised interview during the administration.
Mrs. Trump’s office previously rebuked Grisham’s book, calling it “an attempt to redeem herself after a poor performance as press secretary, failed personal relationships, and unprofessional behavior in the White House.”
“Through mistruth and betrayal, she seeks to gain relevance and money at the expense of Mrs. Trump.”