Politico Pimps Trump Team’s Leaked Texts from Stephanie Grisham to Undermine Her Book
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Politico Playbook uncritically leaked texts from Stephanie Grisham that they obtained from Trump allies attempting to undermine claims from Grisham’s upcoming book “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House.”
This is a truly baffling case of who do you root for, because Grisham stood by and cosigned four years of Trump horrors before trying to paint herself in a more favorable light with this book, while Trump and his minions are insurrectionist scum still trading on racism, and Politico is lending them credibility and a platform for craven PR work. They all stink.
That said, Politico gets special attention for lending its credibility to a naked PR campaign that doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny at all. In the most recent edition of Playbook — bylined by Tara Palmeri, Rachael Bade, Ryan Lizza, and Eugene Daniels — the “insider” publication trots out the leaked texts with the subject line “Scoop: Grisham texts cast doubt on book claim”:
STEPHANIE GRISHAM writes in her upcoming book that she did not believe that the election was stolen and tried to convince MELANIA TRUMP there was no grand conspiracy to deny her husband a second term. But a senior Trump aide provided text messages to Playbook suggesting that Grisham was sympathetic to — and in one instance tried to assist — efforts to stop the certification of the election in her home state of Arizona.
The problem is that none of the leaked texts actually contradict Grisham’s (admittedly likely self-serving) claim that then-First Lady Melania Trump “didn’t listen to Grisham when she tried to explain to her that there are small irregularities in all elections but there was no grand conspiracy to unfairly remove Trump from office,” as Politico excerpted it.
The leaked texts only demonstrate what Grisham herself has demonstrated: that she went along with the Trump team’s delusions in the way that anyone performing the putrid job of an official in that White House would do — and minimally so. She said, of an Arizona elections official who defended the legitimacy of their election result, “Told you. Useless.”
She texted the same aide, about the same dude, “Such an ass.”
And she forwarded a request for funds to chase election fraud to the Trump campaign with the smoking-gun message “Any ideas?”
Yes, if Grisham had an ounce of decency or patriotism, she would have resigned and told the world what a traitorous fraud she’d just ejected herself from. That’s not the issue.
And yes, if the Trump officials leaking these texts had any courage or decency, they’d have done the same, and failing that, they could at least have put their names to the leaks.
But Politico has duties that these people don’t have. They don’t have to publish these texts uncritically. They could have interrogated them even a little bit, or insisted on the broader contexts of these exchanges, or tried to get the sources to respond to follow-up questions like “So fucking what? This in no way means Grisham didn’t privately try to talk Melania down, not even a little bit.”
And at a minimum, they have a duty not to package them with the false headline that the obviously self-serving leaks undermine Grisham’s self-serving book. It’s not difficult.
Unless, of course, you rely on a reputation of pliant complicity to obtain those leaks in the first place. Then, it’s pretty hard.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
