Stephanie Grisham says she needed to be ‘deprogrammed’ after leaving the White House

• Stephanie Grisham says she needed to be "deprogrammed" after the chaos of the Trump White House.
• "I know for me, a toxic environment was normal," she said of her time at high levels of the White House.
• Grisham told Insider that "normal things" like crickets chirping at night made her anxious.

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham struggled with anxiety and needed to be "deprogrammed" after leaving the White House, she told Insider in a Friday interview.

Grisham, who is releasing a tell-all memoir about her time in the White House, moved halfway across the United States to a small town in rural Kansas at around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She spent most of her last months in the White House working as communications director to former First Lady Melania Trump and commuting to Washington, D.C. before officially resigning over the January 6 insurrection.

"I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I know for me, a toxic environment was normal," she said. "I've tried to explain to people that when I left and went to Kansas, normal things were not normal to me. Like quiet nights with crickets chirping and stars, it gave me anxiety. And having just dinner with family and watching TV, normal things made me anxious because I had been so used to the chaos."

In the memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," Grisham characterizes a dysfunctional environment in the White House and reveals new, unflattering anecdotes about former President Donald Trump and the notoriously private Melania Trump.

Grisham said she believed that she would have resigned even if the Trumps didn't eventually turn on her or even if the Capitol riots never happened, telling Insider, "No matter the scenario, I think I would have come to a lot of the conclusions that I came to much later."

"It is hard to describe it," Grisham said of leaving Trumpworld. "You know, a lot of people are saying, 'Too little too late', which I completely understand and feel that it is fair, but it's also so nuanced in how you really have to step away and become deprogrammed, and realize what's important, I think, to really see how bad it is."

Grisham told Insider she "disappeared for a while" and didn't speak out against Trump's false claims of election fraud because she "just needed some time to be again, deprogrammed, and calm and quiet, and just figure out, you know, where I stood on a lot of things."

Grisham got in on the ground floor as a junior press wrangler on the Trump campaign and, through her dogged loyalty to the Trumps and willingness to turn a blind eye to a lot of red flags, she says, rose through the ranks to become one of Melania's few closest confidantes and to hold the coveted position of press secretary.

Both Trump and Melania have come out swinging against Grisham in public statements and denounced her as a disgruntled ex-employee looking to cash in on her White House experience.

"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."

Grisham told Insider she was fully honest in what she wrote about Melania and has text messages and other evidence to back it up.

"I expected it," she said of the former first lady's response. "Did I get paid to write a book? Yes, but also, I'm not sure you can put a price tag on maybe some of the stuff I've gone through since."