Carolyn Kaster/AP
- Stephanie Grisham told Insider it's "great to be humble again" after leaving the White House.
- The former White House press secretary is out with a tell-all memoir on the Trumps.
- "I got very, very heady with power," Grisham said. "So it's been a journey to become humble again."
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Insider it's "great to be humble again" after leaving the White House and exiling herself from former President Donald Trump's orbit.
Grisham, who worked nearly four years in the White House and spent most of her time in East Wing as former first lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and spokeswoman, resigned over the events of January 6 and she came out with a tell-all memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House."
In the book, she confronts how, her inflated ego and sense of power blinded her to red flags and made her feel like she was immune from being cast aside by the Trumps. In an interview, she says she's distancing herself from the haughty staffer she was but remains proud of some of the policies she promoted.
Both the former president and first lady have denounced Grisham in strong, personal terms as a disgruntled ex-employee and ineffective press secretary seeking a payday by trading in on her White House experience at the Trumps' expense, and sought to discredit the book altogether.
Grisham told Insider in an October 8 interview that "of course it doesn't feel good" to be attacked by her former bosses, even though she fully anticipated the personal smears.
"When they don't like the message, they're just going to try to destroy the messenger," she said. "I know because I used to do it to people."
When asked how she'll go about approaching potential employers in the future, Grisham said she'll rely on instincts.
"There were so many times that my gut was telling me something and I ignored it or turned my head or made excuses," she said.
"I've come out of this much stronger," Grisham said. "No one nobody's going to bully me ever again, nobody's going to abuse me ever again. It took a long time, 40 years, for me to kind of come to the conclusions that I did. But no matter what, if I'm being honest, that's all that matters. And I have my friends, my family, my children, my dogs, and that's enough for me. I've learned that I don't need any more."
After several press and communications roles in Republican politics, Grisham got in on the ground floor as a junior press wrangler on the Trump campaign. Through her dogged loyalty to the Trumps, she rose through the ranks to become one of Melania's few closest confidantes and to hold the coveted position of press secretary.
She moved halfway across the United States to a small town in rural Kansas at around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, spending her last months in the White House commuting. She has been laying low there and writing her book, which serves as part accounting of the Trump White House and part airing of grievances, since her departure from Trumpworld.
Grisham told Insider that, aside from promoting the book, she's currently taking time to reconnect with friends and family and is in no rush to figure out her next career move, although she wants to do something to prevent Trump from winning a second term in 2024.
In the interview, she shared a mantra for coming to terms with her life after the Trumps, which seems to flip her former boss's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."
"I think that when you're with the Trumps, you kind of get sucked into this glamorous lifestyle where you want more and more and more. And I got very, very heady with power," Grisham said. "So it's been a journey to become humble again, but it also feels great to be humble again."
Grisham told Insider that "I've been very tough on myself and I've been very self-deprecating to myself, hence the title of the book" - a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that she famously never once briefed the press as White House press secretary from July 2019 to April 2020.
"Being humble, I lost all sight of that. I was not a humble person in there and it feels really good to be humble. Really does," she said.
Grisham said she's realized that her circle of closest friends and family from before she worked at the White House is all she needs.
"That's who I will trust because they haven't let me down and have a lot of them have even forgiven me for choices. they weren't real proud of or fond of when I was the White House," she said, adding: "And if there's one thing I'm grateful for, I do think I was part of some great policy within that administration."