Melania Trump grew so disengaged over the course of her husband’s presidency that she was asleep on the night of the 2020 election and oversaw a “photo shoot of a rug” during the January 6 riot on the US Capitol, according to her former chief of staff Stephanie Grisham.
In her forthcoming book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House, Grisham, who famously never held a press briefing during her nine-month stint as White House press secretary, claimed that Melania Trump was furious over reports of her husband’s affair with Stormy Daniels.
The former first lady began to omit her husband from photos and tweets and told Grisham she did not believe her husband’s denials or those of his former fixer and personal attorney, Michael Cohen, reported The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the book.
“Oh, please, are you kidding me?” she reportedly said at one point. “I don’t believe any of that.”
Melania Trump’s detachment grew to the point where she was asleep on the night of the 2020 election, Grisham wrote. On January 6, the day her husband held a rally that led to a horde of his supporters storming the US Capitol to try and overturn the election, she was at a photo-op for a rug, Grisham said, and declined to make a public comment about what was taking place on Capitol Hill.
Grisham, who was the first lady’s chief of staff after leaving her job as White House press secretary in April 2020, resigned from the Trump administration on January 6.
Melania Trump did release a statement about the deadly attack on the Capitol the following week, claiming she was the victim of “salacious gossip” after a former aide accused her of having little regard for human life and democracy in the wake of the riot.
Ultimately, the first lady backed her husband: She expressed doubt over the election results, aligning herself with his false narrative that the election was rigged against him, and reportedly told Grisham, “Something bad happened.”
Donald Trump released a statement attacking Grisham on Tuesday, claiming the former staffer was “angry and bitter” about a break-up during her tenure and was getting “paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”