Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham admitted she thought it was a mistake to have worked for the Trump administration in a new Monday morning interview.
She joined Good Morning America ahead of the release of her memoir, 'I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw In The Trump White House,' and spoke candidly about her regrets and worries about Trump's past actions and future potential presidential bid.
One of those concerns is how Donald Trump interacted with authoritarian rulers, who Grisham claimed he was desperate to 'impress.'
Host George Stephanopoulos asked Grisham about her accounts of Trump's deferential demeanor and manipulation at the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
'How do you explain why the president was so placating of President Putin?' he asked.
'This is my opinion, but I got the feeling he wanted to impress dictators. I think he almost admired how tough they were,' she said.
Grisham claims Trump told Putin during a G20 meeting in Japan, 'I'll act tougher with you for a few minutes, but that's just for the cameras.'
During the same meeting Grisham said that Putin brought an 'attractive' translator with him to distract Trump.
The ex-White House aide admitted that she regretted working for the Trump administration
'As the meeting began, Fiona Hill leaned over and asked me if I had noticed Putin's translator, who was a very attractive brunette woman with long hair, a pretty face, and a wonderful figure,' Grisham wrote in an excerpt release in the New York Times.
'She proceeded to tell me that she suspected the woman had been selected by Putin specifically to distract our president.'
Grisham told Good Morning America she felt 'stupid' for not noticing the allegedly obvious ploy.
'She pointed that out to me, and I mean, I actually kind of felt stupid that I didn't notice that because sure enough the president actually paid attention to her and spoke to her, and I'd never seen him do that and I never saw him do it again,' Grisham said.
The translator, whose name is Daria Boyarskaya, is an employee of the Russian government and an amateur salsa dancer. The Kremlin denied that she was selected to distract Trump.
Reports from the forthcoming tell-all have already produced embarrassing and troubling headlines for the former president and his family, having spent four years working intimately with both Trump and the first lady.
Grisham was a 2016 campaign aide who became First Lady Melania Trump's spokeswoman, before being elevated to White House press secretary and communications director from July 2019 to April 2020.
In one excerpt Grisham claims Vladimir Putin brought an 'attractive' translator (left) to a meeting with Donald Trump
Pictured: Daria Boyarskaya, who Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed in an upcoming book was specifically hired by Putin to distract Trump
Pictured: Daria Boyarskaya, left and right. The meeting was not the first time that Putin had used Boyarskaya to translate in a session with an American president
She then returned to the East Wing to serve as the first lady's spokesperson, again, and chief of staff - and said the difference between the two worlds was stark.
'As I went through my years, I spent a huge amount of time on the East Wing, and so I was almost shielded sometimes from a lot of the toxic nature of the West Wing and the administration,' she said.
'When I went to the West Wing is when I actually started to see what it was really like and I regretted that decision immediately.'
Grisham described another account in her book in which Trump reportedly asked her to join him in praising Turkey's President Erdogan.
'I write about a situation in the book where we were in a meeting with Turkish President Erdogan and he stopped me and said, "Stephanie, who do you think is tougher? President Xi or Erdogan?" Who was sitting right there,' the former aide recounted.
'You know, I just think he was always just impressed by how tough they were and worried about impressing them over, you know, our allies.'
During the interview Grisham was also confronted about her own controversial White House legacy. She's the only White House press secretary to never hold a news briefing.
Grisham, who is the only White House press secretary to not have held a news briefing, said the president was the one who instructed her 'we didn't need any more briefings'
Grisham said that was also Trump's doing.
'When we discussed me taking the job, he had already suspended the briefings for about six months under Sarah and he said, we didn't need any more briefings and he spoke to the press directly, and my job was behind the scenes with print and regional and local,' she claimed.
But despite the less public nature of her role, Grisham said she was speaking out now partly because of her guilt for enabling Trump to upend the US presidency and create a toxic workplace.
'I've reflected on that, and I regret that, and especially now watching him - and so many people - push the false election narrative, I now want to in whatever way I can, educate the public about the behaviors within the White House because it does look like he's going to try to run in 2024,' she said.
Stephanopoulos asked, 'Do you believe he will?'
'I didn't at first but I'm starting to believe he will - I mean, he's clearly the frontrunner in the Republican party,' Grisham said, adding that Trump was on a 'revenge tour.'
'I want to just warn people that once he takes office, if he were to win, he doesn't have to worry about re-election anymore. He will be about revenge. He will probably have some pretty draconian policies that go on,' she said.
DailyMail.com obtained a live photo of Stephanie Grisham lying on the floor of the White House during the 2020 presidential election. A source who was at the election party tells DailyMail.com that the picture was taken to show how embarrassing her antics were
Grisham, who served as Melania Trump's chief of staff and White House press secretary, has claimed in her new book that the former first lady slept through most of the night and had to be woken up. A source who shared the live photo said the picture was taken as 'proof' of Grisham's antics
Grisham was once close to the Trump family, striking up a friendship with the first lady.
She described herself as being a 'true believer' in 2016 before learning how Trump operated behind closed doors.
Then, Grisham said, it became about 'survival.'
'I do believe he gave voice to a lot of people who did feel forgotten, and many of us, including myself, got into that White House and got heavy with power and became really - we didn't think about serving the country anymore. It was about surviving in there, and he loved it. He loved the chaos.'
The former first family has come out swinging against their ex-confidante. Both Trump and Melania put out statements attacking Grisham's credibility and lobbing criticisms over her professional and personal life.
But Grisham dismissed their criticism on Monday.
'I expected that. I expect more. This is right out of their playbook. When they don't like the message, they're going to destroy the messenger. I know. I was part of doing that sometimes.
She pointed out that the ex-first lady wasn't 'denying anything fully in the book just yet.'
'I think she knows that I have a lot of receipts to show I'm being fully honest. So I expected that, and I'm sure that there will be more to come, probably a lawsuit or two or three or four,' Grisham said.
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