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- In her forthcoming memoir, Stephanie Grisham said she stayed at the White House for so long due to a lack of options.
- "The Trumps were all I had. At least that was what I believed for a long time," Grisham wrote.
- Grisham resigned from her post after her distaste for the White House's handling of the Jan. 6 riot.
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After the 2019 Dayton, Ohio, shootings that left 9 people dead and 27 people injured, then-President Donald Trump visited an intensive care unit and became upset after press cameras failed to capture medical staffers giving him acclamation, according to former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's forthcoming memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now."
"What a waste," the president reportedly said, fixated on what he saw as a mishap.
When Trump saw criticism from local Democratic politicians on the news over his tweets, he erupted, with much of his ire directed towards Grisham.
"Why are you even on this plane? What do I have a whole team of people for if there is no one fucking defending me?" he reportedly told the press secretary on Air Force One.
In a section of the book that was published by The Washington Post as part of a review, Grisham explores how her relationship with Trump was akin to "the distant, erratic father we all wanted to please."
Grisham, a veteran of the Trump administration at that point, wrote that she accepted the tough treatment because she didn't have many options.
"I was a single mom with no trust fund. If I had quit earlier, where would I have gone?" she wrote in the memoir. "The Trumps were all I had. At least that was what I believed for a long time."
While top staffers from most White House administrations have been able to forge high-profile roles in the private sector and academia, many Trump staffers have had a difficult time finding employment.
However, the Jan. 6 insurrection galvanized the press secretary to finally leave the corridors of the White House.
When Grisham texted then-first lady Melania Trump that day and asked if she desired to speak out publicly against the riot, she reportedly declined, responding: "No."
Grisham reportedly wrote that she was broken by the response, and after a minute, she texted the first lady and subsequently resigned as her chief of staff and press secretary.
The women have reportedly not spoken since that day.
Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for the former president, told The Washington Post last week that Grisham's memoir "is another pitiful attempt to cash in on the President's strength and sell lies about the Trump family."
Harrington proceeded to criticize Grisham as "a disgruntled former employee" and said that publishers who have greenlit the wave of books critiquing the administration "should be ashamed of themselves for preying on desperate people who see the short term gain in writing a book full of falsehoods."
source https://www.businessinsider.com/stephanie-grisham-trump-white-house-single-mom-trust-fund-jobs-2021-10