Grisham: Trump pretended to act tough with Putin for the cameras

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Russian President Vladimir Putin brought an ‘attractive’ translator with him to distract former President Donald Trump at their 2019 meeting – and Trump told Putin he would act tough in front of the cameras and then play nice privately, former White House official Stephanie Grisham reveals in her forthcoming tell-all. 

‘OK, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave, we’ll talk. You understand,’ Trump had told Putin when they met in June 2019 in Japan at the G20, Grisham recounted.  

Copies of Grisham’s book – I’ll Take Your Questions Now, What I Saw at Trump White House – were obtained by The Washington Post and The New York Times. It hits bookshelves on October 5.   

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. 

She then returned to the East Wing to serve as the first lady’s spokesperson, again, and chief of staff. 

The new book fills in some blanks about some of the most memorable moments from Trump’s one term.   

The Putin meeting in question came 11 months after the infamous Helsinki summit where Trump seemed to side with the Russian president over American intelligence agencies on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

At the July 2018 meeting, Trump said Putin offered an ‘extremely strong and powerful’ denial. 

At their 2019 meeting in Japan, Trump playfully scolded and wagged a finger at Putin in front of the cameras telling the Russian leader, ‘don’t meddle in the election,’ before they met behind closed doors for 90 minutes without journalists present. 

According to The Times, Grisham conversed with Fiona Hill – the administration’s Russia expert turned impeachment 1.0 witness – who explained what Putin was doing to throw Trump off.  

‘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. ‘She proceeded to tell me that she suspected the woman had been selected by Putin specifically to distract our president.’ 

A brunette woman with a blue dress can be seen following Putin into the room as the Russian leader greets the American delegation in Osaka.  

Trump would cut his hair with giant scissors and tunes from his favorite musicals would calm him down  

Grisham’s includes bizarre details about Trump’s behavior. 

For instance, she claims he cuts his hair with a ‘huge pair of scissors that could probably cut a ribbon at an opening of one of his properties.’  

She also writes that one of Trump’s aides – later revealed to be Grisham’s ex-boyfriend Max Miler, who is running for an Ohio Congressional seat and has been endorsed by Trump – would play him his favorite show tunes, including ‘Memory’ from Cats, to calm him down during tantrums. 

Grisham described Trump’s temper as ‘terrifying.  

Trump continued the womanizing behavior he was known for as a brash Manhattan real estate tycoon at the White House, Grisham revealed, writing that he repeatedly invited a young press aide to his Air Force One cabin – one time to look at her behind. 

Trump instructed Grisham to ‘keep her happy.’ 

Grisham tried to keep the staffer away from the president, she wrote.  

The ex-press secretary also recalled how Trump insisted his penis was not shaped like a toadstool – responding to comments made by porn star Stormy Daniels.   

Daniels wrote in a 2018 book on her affair with the former president: ‘I lay there, annoyed that I was getting f***ed by a guy with Yeti pubes and a d*** like the mushroom character in Mario Kart.’  

Trump, upon hearing the allegation, called his press secretary from Air Force one to assure her his penis was neither small nor shaped like a toadstool, Grisham said.

Grisham also wrote that the former president once asked her former boyfriend, Miller, if she was good in bed. 

Melania’s campaign of revenge on Trump over his ‘affair’ with Stormy Daniels 

The Daniels affair, Grisham wrote, ‘unleashed’ Melania’s vengeance as she began trying to contradict her husband in public. 

The first lady told Grisham she didn’t believe her husband’s denials.  

When Grisham drafted a tweet requesting privacy at the time of the affair, saying that Melania would focus on being a first lady, wife and mother, the first lady asked Grisham to scrub the tweet of the word ‘wife.’ 

And at the 2018 State of the Union, Melania Trump broke protocol and took her own motorcade to the Capitol Building – largely seen as a dig at her husband. 

At the time, Grisham told DailyMail.com and CNN that Mrs. Trump was ‘honoring her guests for the true heroes they are,’ referring to those seated in the first lady’s box at the presidential speech. ‘In addition to holding a White House reception and photo opportunity for them and their friends and family, she is accompanying them to the Capitol,’ Grisham said. 

In the book, Grisham said Melania Trump’s moves were by design, as the first lady walked arm-in-arm with a handsome military aide hand-slected by Grisham because the floors of the Capitol were ‘slippery.’ 

‘I laughed to myself because I’d seen the woman navigate dirt roads in her heels,’ Grisham wrote.      

As coverage of Trump’s romp with Daniels wore on, Grisham said 

‘This is Donald’s problem. He got himself into this mess. He can fix it by himself,’ Melania Trump said, according to Grisham.   

Trump wanted Grisham to evict the press and reenact his perfect phone call 

During her time serving as White House press secretary, Trump asked Grisham to find a way to remove the press from the White House premises. 

He also wanted her to re-enact his ‘perfect’ phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for them. 

She revealed that a trip to North Korea inspired Trump to ask her to find ways he could evict the White House press corps from the James Brady briefing room – a place he frequently held news conferences and bantered with reporters. 

‘I researched different places we could put them other than the press briefing room. Each time the president asked me about my progress on the matter, I let him know I was still working on options,’ Grisham wrote.

Grisham, who was notable for never holding a press briefing as White House press secretary, explains she didn’t do so out of fears of what Trump would ask her to say at the podium. 

Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, famously argued Trump’s inauguration crowd was ‘the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration’ – claim that did not match side-by-side photos of Trump’s inauguration with Barack Obama’s and destroyed his credibility. 

‘I knew that sooner or later the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic,’ she noted.

She also detailed one of Trump’s more outlandish requests – that she appear before the press corps and reenact his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to his first impeachment. 

She managed to avoid doing it.

Trump, himself, famously like to reenact the call by reliving what he and Zelensky said, using different tones of voices to make his point. 

Trump’s mysterious medical procedure at Walter Reed was likely a colonoscopy

While Grisham didn’t name the procedure, the former Trump aide strongly hinted that what Trump went to Walter Reed for in November 2019 was a colonoscopy.  

In the book, Grisham described it as a ‘very common procedure’ where ‘a patient is sometimes put under.’ 

The reason for the secrecy, Grisham explained, was that Trump didn’t want to hand over power to Vice President Mike Pence, even for a short amount of time, because it would be ‘showing weakness.’ 

He also didn’t want to be ‘the butt of the joke,’ she wrote, on late-night TV.   

At the time, Grisham told reporters that Trump had traveled to the Bethesda, Maryland facility to ‘begin portions of his routine annual physical exam.’    

Grisham expressed that the concealment was regrettable. 

She noted in the book that Trump could have used his influence to demystify colonoscopies – and thus save lives.

‘But as with COVID, he was too wrapped up in his own ego and his own delusions about his invincibility,’ Grisham said.   

White House staff called Ivanka ‘the princess’ and she and Jared tried to push their way into a meeting with the Queen 

Aides to former President Donald Trump referred to his daughter Ivanka as ‘the princess,’ Grisham said. 

Grisham wrote that Melania Trump 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.

Grisham terms her husband, former White House aide Jared Kushner, ‘the Slim Reaper’ for getting involved in projects designated for others, she wrote.

Grisham also wrote 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 the president and first lady attended. 

It would have been a ‘wild breach of protocol,’ according to The Post. 

Kushner and Ivanka Trump did attend a state dinner. 

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

Team Trump claims book is another ‘pitiful attempt to cash in on his strength’ 

‘This book is another pitiful attempt to cash in on the President’s strength and sell lies about the Trump family, said Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington. 

Harrington termed Grisham a ‘a disgruntled former employee’ – a term has applied in the past to aides who have written tell-alls. 

She said the book’s publishers ‘should be ashamed of themselves for preying on desperate people who see the short term gain in writing a book full of falsehoods.’

Publisher Harper Collins calls the book ‘The most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House yet.’

Grisham was among the flurry of Trump officials who resigned from their posts on January 6, in the aftermath of the Capitol riot.

Trump went after Grisham personally in a statement released Tuesday morning. 

‘Stephanie didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning,’ Trump said. ‘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.’

‘We and the MAGA movement are totally used to it. And someday in the not too distant future we will have our voice back and be treated fairly by the press,’ the ex-president added.