Ivanka was the ‘brains’ and Jared was ‘heady with power’ in Trump White House

Stephanie Grisham said Tuesday that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were running a shadow presidency in the Trump White House, where they could hire whom they please and would disappear when the going got tough. 

‘I believe that he and Ivanka kind of thought they were a shadow President and First Lady,’ she said. 

The former White House press secretary was on CNN’s New Day as part of media tour for her memoir ‘I’ll Take Your Questions Now,’ her tale about her work for Donald and Melania Trump, which is out on Tuesday. 

She said Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law whom she described as ‘Rasputin in a slim-fitting,’ grew ‘heady with power’ during his four years as Donald Trump’s senior White House counselor. 

Grisham said Kushner ‘changed as we went through the White House. And he got really heady with power.’ She said he hired his own chief of staff for his corner of the West Wing.

‘He did what he wanted and nobody challenged him,’ she noted.

She described how then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows put a hiring freeze in place, saying no one could be hired without his authorization. 

‘Jared Kushner basically told him what he thought of that and got to do what he wanted,’ Grisham said. 

‘Nobody ever challenged Jared,’ she said, adding ‘this was the president’s son in law.’

Grisham said of the Kushners: Jared grew ‘heady with power’ but Ivanka was the ‘brains’

She said Kushner would dive into policy areas where he had no expertise in an attemp to ‘save the day’ and then when ‘things were getting really tough,’ he and Ivanka would ‘suddenly disappeared on vacations.’ 

But Grisham said it was Ivanka Trump, the former president’s oldest daughter, who was the ‘brains’ of the couple. 

‘Ivanka is very, she’s very controlling of her image, she’s very controlled in what she does, she is very calm, which is unlike her father, and I think that she’s the smarter one,’ she said.

Grisham revealed in her book that the couple tried to push their way into Donald and Melania Trump’s meeting with The Queen during the Trumps’ state visit to the UK in June 2019. 

She also said Jared and Ivanka acted in a similar manner on the February 2020 state trip to India, pushing their own schedule and trying to get into meetings and tours with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

‘They were involved in like tours that Modi was giving the former president and first lady and there they were to, you know, they were always right there and it was really inappropriate and that would make Mrs. Trump upset because she is a big rule follower in terms of protocol,’ she said.

She noted that Melania’s staff in the East Wing tried to stop them but were unable to.  ‘At the end of the day, it’s his daughter and son in law and nobody could work around him,’ Grisham noted. 

She also revealed that at President Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018, she and another Melania staffer tried to block Jared and Ivanka from following Melania Trump into the family box in the House chamber. 

Grisham said the news had broken recently about Stormy Daniels’ allegation she had an affair with Trump, which Trump denied, and the staff ‘were really protective’ of the first lady.

Melania Trump had taken her own car to the Capitol to arrive at the speech separately from the president.  

‘We raced out of the motorcade and literally physically blocked them so that Mrs. Trump could have her moment and walk in. It worked for maybe three minutes and then their Secret Service pushed us aside but we got our job done,’ she said.

Grisham said Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump muscled their way into events during Trump state visit to India in February 2020 – above the Kushners in front of the Taj Mahal

Grisham revealed that at President Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018, she and another Melania staffer tried to block Jared and Ivanka from following Melania Trump into the family box – above Melania is escorted into the speech by a military aide

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at President Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address

In the same interview, Grisham revealed there was a ‘culture of abuse’ in Donald Trump’s White House, admitted she lied in TV interviews and said she believes Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell would be on staff if the former president ran and won in 2024.

Grisham, who worked for Donald Trump from the early days of his 2016 campaign until she resigned in protest on January 6th, described what it was like to work for the former president. During her tenure she served as spokesperson for him and for Melania Trump.

‘It took me a really long time to realize it was a culture of abuse in there, you just want to keep Donald Trump happy. You just don’t want him to yell at you,’ she said.  ‘You learn to give him the answer that he wants. We learned to work around him.’

She described Trump yelling at her to her face when she refused to kick CNN’s Kaitlin Collins out of the White House briefing room.

‘He was yelling at me to my face in that one. Um it’s horrible when he yells at you. It’s horrible. He is very New York I guess,’ she said. ‘He’s very mean when he yells at you.’

Grisham also outlined her worries about Trump’s continued false claim that he won the 2020 election. She said she was concerned if he ran again in 2024 and won, he would seek ‘revenge’ and be out of control.

‘The fact that he is pushing this election lie is scary to me, and the fact that he’s the frontrunner right now, if he were to run for office, is scary to me,’ Grisham said. ‘And that’s because, if he gets into office, he doesn’t run for re-election again. He’ll be able to do whatever he wants, and we all know, there’s going to be retribution, there’s going revenge. I guarantee there will be very draconian policies, and they’re not going to care, because they don’t have to run for re-election again.’

Trump has not said whether or not he will make another presidential bid in 2024 although many see him as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination should he choose to get into the race. 

During his time in the White House, the president had to defend many of his decisions – such as not releasing his tax records, keeping his ties to his family business, and for trying to intefere in Justice Department investigations.  

Grisham said if Trump won, his staff for that term would be even more extreme than many of the enablers who surrounded Trump during his first tenure. 

She said she envisioned Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell on staff – the two lawyers led Trump’s failed legal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Both Giuliani and Powell were led propogators of the ‘big lie’ – that Trump won and the election was stolen from him. Multiple recounts proved Joe Biden won in 2020.

‘If people think that the people in (the first) Trump White House were bad perhaps, I have a feeling the 1/6 crowd might be working in the White House in 2024, or the Sidney Powells, or the Rudy Giulianis,’ Grisham said. ‘I think people left and right are going to get pardoned. The amount of things, knowing what I know, that could happen, it scares me.’

Stephanie Grisham said she believes if Trump ran and won in 2024 she envisioned Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell on the White House staff – the two lawyers led Trump’s failed legal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results

Stephanie Grisham also revealed she lied when she went on Fox News to talk about administration – above Grisham during her tenure as press secretary for President Trump

Grisham’s book has sparked widespread criticism from the pro-Trump crowd and even the former president weighed in to accuse her of cashing out.

‘Stephanie didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning,’ Trump said in a statement. He said she had become ‘very angry and bitter’ after a breakup. ‘She had big problems and we felt that she should work out those problems for herself. Now, like everyone else, she gets paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.’ 

Grisham was a controversial figure during her time in the Trump White House, particularly for never holding a press briefing when she served in the role of press secretary. 

But she, like many officials in the Trump administatration, often went on Fox News to spread their message. 

‘That’s just where we went to get what we wanted out,’ she said. ‘They, you know, by and large didn’t get tough with us, they just took what we were saying and disseminated it.’ 

I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham comes out on October 5 

Asked if she was always truthful during her interviews on Fox News, she admitted: ‘I probably wasn’t.’

Grisham, 45, then served as press secretary to Trump from July 2019 to April 2020. She then returned to the East Wing as Melania’s chief of staff from April 2020 until January 2021.

Many Trump loyalists have turned on her, including Melania Trump, whose office accused her of cashing in.

And Grisham’s former colleague Alyssa Farah, who served as White House Communications Director for Trump, said during an interview with The View on Monday: ‘First and foremost, I don’t believe in profiting off of public service. I had a chance to write my White House tell-all and declined. The American people, the taxpayers, paid my salary. 

‘I’m not going to go write a book and cash in.’

She went on to declare that Grisham was ‘largely MIA on the job’, and said that the reason she never held a live-televised press briefing was down to her own reluctance to do so, not Trump as Grisham claimed.

‘When I worked for him, it was, ”Go get out on TV, Alyssa. Go give a briefing.” He wanted people out,’ Farah said.

‘It seemed like she was largely MIA on the job.’

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 has returned to the public eye since her exit from the Trump White House, promoting her 352-page memoir.  She went to Kanas after her time in Washington D.C., where she worked on the book. 

She told ABC News she is ‘terrified’ that Trump might run for president again, telling Nightline’s Juju Cheng that a second Trump term would be a disaster.

‘I am terrified of him running in 2024. I don’t think he is fit for the job,’ said Grisham in an interview that aired Monday night.

‘I think that he is erratic. I think that he can be delusional. I think that he is a narcissist and cares about himself first and foremost. And I do not want him to be our president again.’ 

Grisham said a second Trump term in the White House would lead to chaos, claiming the former president’s inflammatory behavior would lead to rising violence and alleged he would only run for the presidency to benefit himself and his family. 

‘I think he would foment more violence. I think he will line his pockets. I think his family will line their pockets.

‘I believe that he wanted to help the country in the beginning – I believe he wants to help himself now.’

And she dismissed her critics, telling ABC’s George Stephanopolous that she expected the attacks. 

‘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 Melania Trump 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. 

White House staff called Ivanka ‘the princess’ and claim she and Jared tried to push their way into meeting the Queen, Stephanie Grisham claims in new book 

Aides to former President Donald Trump referred to his daughter Ivanka as ‘the princess,’ according to a new tell-all book – which describes Ivanka Trump’s efforts to insinuate herself into a meeting with the Queen in 2019.

Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham includes the detail in her new book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now – a title that references her failure to hold a press briefing during her tenure.

Grisham, who went on to serve as first lady Melania Trump’s top aide, writes that Melania also referred to Ivanka by the name. 

Ivanka, who served as an unpaid senior advisor to the president, regularly referred to him as ‘my father’ in meetings, she writes. Ivanka sometimes used the term in public.

Ivanka Trump (second right) and Jared Kushner (R) looks out of the window at Buckingham Palace during the visit of US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on June 03, 2019 in London, England

White House aides called Ivanka Trump ‘the princess,’ writes former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham in her new book. She terms Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner (c) the ‘Slim Reaper’

Grisham terms her husband, former White House aide Jared Kushner, ‘the Slim Reaper’ for getting involved in projects designated for others, she writes, according to a copy of the book obtained by the Washington Post.   

Grisham also writes that the power couple tried to get themselves into a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II during Trump’s visit to the UK in 2019.

Only Trump and the first lady attended. It would have been a ‘wild breach of protocol,’ according to the post. Jared and Ivanka did attend a state dinner. 

Grisham writes that the situation was resolved when they couldn’t fit into a presidential helicopter.