7 Most Bonkers Revelations About the Trump White House in Stephanie Grisham’s Book: ‘Clown Car On Fire…’

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Stephanie Grisham served as both White House Communications Director and Press Secretary for former President Donald Trump. Her ringside seat as a primary player in the administration gave her a perfect view of the disarray and “clown show” as she called it, which she has collected in an upcoming book I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House, set for release Oct. 5.

An excerpt of that book was published by Politico Friday morning. It has been framed largely as a critique of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, particularly with regards to what many see as a failed handling of the coronavirus pandemic — which may have very well cost Trump a second term in the White House.

“When I worked for the first lady in the East Wing, we had all come to call Jared and Ivanka “the interns” because they represented in our minds obnoxious, entitled know-it-alls,” she writes. “Mrs. Trump found that nickname amusing and occasionally used it herself. Now, during one of the most important crises to hit the country in a century, the interns were behaving true to form.”

And while it is clear that Grisham does not hold Kushner in high esteem, there are many other fascinating, if not salacious, details revealed in the excerpt.

The following are just a handful of examples:

Trump refused a month-long Vegan diet to raise money for Veterans for fear it would mess with his brain.

On another occasion around the new year, a young boy started publicly challenging Trump to go vegan in TV ads and on highway billboards. If the president agreed, the boy said, the charity he represented would donate $1 million to veterans. I was communications director at the time and I playfully asked the president if he would ever consider doing that, since the challenge would raise a lot of money for a good cause. I knew he loved his steaks and cheeseburgers, but one month didn’t seem that long.

Trump’s response was swift, and his tone was suddenly very serious.

“No, no. It messes with your body chemistry, your brain,” he said, offering his views on vegetarian diets. “And if I lose even one brain cell, we’re f—ed.”

Grisham called Trump’s handling of the Covid pandemic a “clown car on fire” … but impossibly worse.

The WHO had just declared Covid a pandemic, and the three of them had apparently been discussing the need for the president to give an address to the nation on Covid-19 from the Oval Office that evening. An address to the nation is serious stuff, and whenever possible you need plenty of time to prepare properly — unless, of course, you were in the Trump White House, where everything was like a clown car on fire running at full speed into a warehouse full of fireworks.

Grisham has little regard for Kushner and suggests he may have been advising Trump in his own best interest.

To this day I don’t know why that trip was so important to Jared, or what, if anything, he got out of it. Jared and his team also ended up negotiating with the Indian government directly over what our security assets and personnel would be on the ground — negotiations that were normally reserved for the Secret Service. It was another example of Jared sticking his nose into things that weren’t his expertise. It felt completely irresponsible and against protocol, which is the epitome of Jared Kushner in the Trump White House.

Trump did NOT want to immediately ban travel from China and worried too much was initially being made by Covid.

No one in the Trump inner circle seemed to be taking the new virus too seriously at first. During a meeting with Modi in India, Trump mentioned the 34 people who were suffering from Covid-19 in quarantine on military ships. He complained that the news was affecting the stock market. “I wonder if this is overrated versus the flu,” he said. Of course, those 34 people would not be the only ones to contract the disease. As the number grew, Trump still seemed resistant to doing anything too drastic. Contrary to what he would say later, he didn’t immediately want to ban travel to China. And he asked officials in the White House if we were making “too big a deal out of this.”

Despite no experience, Ivanka played a lead role in a critical meeting of how to address the pandemic:

And Ivanka, the women’s rights / small-business / crisis communications / and now Covid expert, just kept repeating, “There should be an address from the Oval.”

Finally, Ivanka turned to her most powerful ally besides her father. “Jared, don’t you agree?” Any guesses as to what Jared replied?

…

At one point I called Ivanka out on her plan with what seemed an obvious question. “What is it we’d be saying?” Because if she had a message she wanted her father to deliver, it was still a mystery to me. She just looked at me, seemingly confused.

It is fair to say Grisham has mixed emotions about working for the Trump White House, which she described as such:

Working as Trump’s spokesperson was like sitting in a beautiful office while a sprinkler system pours water down on you every second and ruins everything on your desk — except in this case the water took the form of tweets and words and statements. I can give you endless metaphors to describe the Trump White House from a press person’s perspective — living in a house that was always on fire or in an insane asylum where you couldn’t tell the difference between the patients and the attendants or on a roller coaster that never stopped — but trust me, it was a hot mess 24/7. How people did the job without going crazy was a question in itself.

Trump reportedly insisted — without irony — that he needed a P.T. Barnum as his spokesman.

Instead, he would complain to me, “I need a P. T. Barnum!” as his spokesman, just as he would always say, “I need a James Baker!” whenever he was complaining about his current chief of staff. By P. T. Barnum, I think he meant a communications whiz who could somehow charm reporters into writing whatever he wanted them to write. But maybe he just meant he wanted some expert con man. After all, P. T. Barnum’s most famous line was “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

These are just a few of the fascinating details revealed in the excerpt of the book. Yes, there have been scads of behind-the-scenes tell-all books about the Trump White House, but none from the perspective of the once-loyal Grisham, who only now, when it benefits her financially, is willing to tell a different story. Read the full excerpt here.