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One of the great mysteries of the Trump era was the missed opportunity for the first lady to make her mark on the White House.
With her sleek good looks, straightforward manners, and unique migrant life story, Melania Trump should have been a much more popular asset to the administration.
Yet it has unfortunately been misunderstood and misrepresented.
It’s a measure of the emptiness of the past four years that, despite her impeccable fashion sense, she never appeared on a magazine cover, unlike her predecessors.
None of this is an accident, according to administration loyalists who are now speaking out to protect the first lady, who they say has trusted her immediate staff too much.
Nor is it the product of Melania’s reluctance to help her husband or serve the American people.
No, the picture that emerges from conversations with insiders who have worked for the White House over the past four years is that the first lady has been poorly served by the staff member she trusted the most, Stephanie Grisham .
The 44-year-old, twice-divorced single mother is the first lady’s chief of staff and press secretary and previously served as White House press secretary and communications director.
Despite all the titles, she was the least visible and most combative representative of any first lady in living memory.
Grisham rarely responds to questions from reporters or requests for interviews or photoshoots, with the exception of a handful of favorites, such as Kate Bennett of CNN and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who paradoxically published the top stories. more caustic on the first family.
Grisham has managed to keep Melania Trump isolated from friends, staff and the media, and she alienated potential allies and created drama for the president with her weirdly combative approach.
She was instrumental in alienating National Security Advisor John Bolton from the president when she argued with Bolton’s deputy Mira Ricardel over an airplane seat during the first solo trip of the first lady in Africa, according to Bennett’s book, “Free Melania”.
Grisham then released a reckless statement calling for Ricardel’s dismissal, which enraged Bolton and dismayed the president, according to Mary Jordan’s book, “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.” In his subsequent nefarious reveal, “The Play Where It Happened,” Bolton identifies this moment as the catalyst for his disaffection with Trump.
Grisham also fell out with the First Lady’s former best friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who wrote in detail in her own revealing book, “The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” on the games of Grisham’s toxic power. Wolkoff wrote that Grisham had tried to distance her from the affections of the first lady and settled down as Melania’s main confidante.
The last drop, and the catalyst for this story, was an incident on Election Night at the White House attended by Grisham and 200 guests, after which two witnesses said she left her phone and her badge. the White House unattended.
As a result, at least two complaints have been filed about his conduct and a formal investigation was opened by the Administration Office a week and a half ago. Lawyers have interviewed half a dozen employees, including Secret Service agents, and recommended further action, according to those with knowledge of the case.
Grisham, who reportedly had two arrests for drunk driving, denies leaving his work phone anywhere that night.
“I left my badge at [White House] before, ”she said.
Then there were the media leaks, which no one seemed able to control. One of the most damaging this year has been that the President, Melania and their son, Barron, were rushed into the secure underground bunker under the East Wing by Secret Service agents concerned for the safety of the family during the Black Lives Matter riots outside the White House in May.
The story was published by Grisham’s favorite, Haberman, in the New York Times.
Only three staff – Grisham, Trump’s loyalist social media director Dan Scavino and Trump’s bodybuilder Nick Luna – were aware of the incident, according to a former senior White House official.
Grisham, who had returned to Melania’s office after Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows moved her from the White House press role in April, is receiving alerts about the first lady’s moves.
Additionally, she is rarely seen in the White House, having been pointed out in the East Wing less than 30 times since taking office in April. According to four insiders, Grisham has moved to Kansas and has not attended a single executive meeting in the past seven months.
“She checked completely,” said one of them.
Grisham denies leaving Washington, DC. But a source confirmed that she “spent time in Kansas” for family reasons.
She agrees she’s been in the office “a lot less”, but that’s because “the East Wing has been telecommuting extensively over the past seven months because of COVID.”
Other staff members point out that key employees, who would include the chief of staff, did work in the White House, and the first lady asked where Grisham was during the turkey pardon last week.
In her full eight months as White House press secretary, starting in July 2019, Grisham never held a press briefing, leaving the president to take care of answering questions from a frustrated press corps. the White House, to its detriment.
White House staff also blame Grisham for Bob Woodward’s disastrous book “Rage”, as she was the press secretary in charge when the deal was negotiated. She did not manage Woodward’s access to the president, including imposing the usual conditions for recording interviews.
“She was a press secretary who never spoke to the press,” explains a former colleague. “She made her way to the post, but she didn’t serve the press very well… and the president was grossly underserved.
Then there were the missed opportunities to polish the Trump family brand.
Having avoided countless offers of positive interviews from US media outlets such as Women’s Wear Daily and The Post, Grisham allowed UK magazine Tatler to have the campaign’s only exclusive interview for its November issue. And yet, she didn’t negotiate the cover of the magazine.
Instead, Meghan Markle took the honor.
There were other awkward blunders during the campaign. Perhaps most shocking was when the president and the first lady tested positive for the coronavirus in October. On his last day in hospital, the president left Walter Reed Medical Center for a procession of defenders in front of supporters outside and was criticized for potentially putting his Secret Service operatives at risk.
Yet at the same time, a spokesperson for Melania told Grisham favorite Bennett to CNN and NBC White House correspondent Peter Alexander that the first lady was not going to visit her husband at the hospital because she is “aware of the dangers of COVID-19.” “And didn’t want” to denounce the agents who would take her there. “
Everyone who spoke to me for this column says they are motivated by the desire to save the first lady to keep Grisham for her post-White House life or to help Melania write her memoir.
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