Carlo Allegri/Reuters
- Stephanie Grisham said Melania Trump dissuaded her from leaving the White House multiple times.
- Grisham told Insider she was "done" about six months before quitting on January 6, 2021.
- Grisham said she "had tried to resign a few times and the first lady had talked me into staying."
Stephanie Grisham said former First Lady Melania Trump convinced her not to leave the White House multiple times in the last six months, despite now harshly denouncing her former aide as "troubled" and her performance at work "poor."
Grisham, a former White House press secretary who worked as Melania's communications director and chief of staff for her last eight months in the administration, is out with a tell-all memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now." She told Insider in a Friday interview that she would have resigned even if the Trumps hadn't eventually turned on her and even if the events of January 6 never happened.
"No, no, no, no. I was, by that time, done," Grisham told Insider when asked if she would have stayed. "I had been done for probably six months before I resigned and had tried to resign a few times and the first lady had talked me into staying, which also contradicts her statements that I was troubled and terrible."
The former first lady not only cut off Grisham after her resignation on January 6 but has now completely turned on her former right-hand woman over her memoir. Melania has denounced her as a liar seeking a payday by trading in on her White House experience and years working for the Trumps, starting as a press wrangler on the 2016 campaign.
"The author is desperately trying to rehabilitate her tarnished reputation by manipulating and distorting the truth about Mrs. Trump," Melania's office said in a Monday statement. "Ms. Grisham is a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn't deserve anyone's trust."
Melania's office previously called the book "an attempt to redeem herself after a poor performance as press secretary, failed personal relationships, and unprofessional behavior in the White House" and accused Grisham of seeking "relevance and money" at Melania's expense.
"I would have not stayed, no" Grisham said when asked if she would have remained Melania's chief of staff had Trump won reelection. "And I told everybody, even Mrs. Trump, that if he won again, I would be done...and this was well before January 6."
Grisham, who moved to a small town in rural Kansas at around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and spent much of her last months in the administration working remotely, told Insider that she needed to be far away from Trumpworld to realize the full scope of the chaos and dysfunction the White House.
"I believe that you really do have to kind of remove yourself from the people and the toxic environment that had become such a normal thing for a lot of us," she said. "I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I know for me a toxic environment was normal."