Melania Trump purportedly refused to condemn the January 6 violence.
The January 6 hearings are exposing Americans to a set of consistently shocking details about former President Donald Trump and his administration. One such shocking detail comes in the form of a tweet from Stephanie Grisham, who served as the White House Press Secretary and then as Chief of Staff to First Lady Melania Trump.
In June, Grisham shared a screenshot on Twitter of what she claims are her text messages with Melania. In the messages, the first lady (MT) appears to reject her aide’s proposal to tweet condemning the January 6 violence.
On Thursday, nearly a month after Grisham shared this text exchange, the former first lady finally spoke out in response to the allegations made against her. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Melania said she was completely “unaware” of the riots taking place at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. “I was fulfilling one of my duties as First Lady of the United States of America, and accordingly, I was unaware of what was simultaneously transpiring at the U.S. Capitol Building,” she said. She claims to have been organizing a photoshoot of the White House renovations at the time, and added, “I always condemn violence.”
Melania went on to accuse Grisham of being personally responsible for this apparent disconnect. “Ms. Grisham was not in the White House on January 6, and her behavior in her role as Chief of Staff ultimately amounts to dereliction of duty,” she said.
Grisham immediately responded to these accusations, again via a tweet. “Lol,” she wrote. “That’s truly all I’ve got.”
Grisham shares why this moment with the first lady ‘broke’ her
In a discussion with CNN earlier this summer, Grisham said she was shocked by Melania’s response to her text, since she’d previously gone to the first lady when political situations were escalating, and that the FLOTUS would either “call her husband and talk him down from something or put out a statement well ahead of the West Wing to set a tone that this is not OK.”
“Knowing her as well as I did at that point, it was so unlike her to not have condemned it,” said Grisham. “That was the moment that it all kind of broke me.”
Grisham explained that after she heard former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, she felt it was important for her to share the message, to add additional context.
Grisham resigned from the White House on January 6th after this text exchange, stating she was “disappointed, discouraged, and sickened” by the first lady’s reluctance to condemn violence. In 2021, she released her memoir called I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw in the Trump White House, recounting her experience with the Trump family and her personal reckoning.
Reacting to Hutchinson’s recent testimony about Trump throwing a plate at the wall, Grisham said, “His [Donald Trump’s] temper was swift and it was scary. I was on the receiving end of it many, many times. I witnessed him throwing pens and papers. But, it rang completely true to me. I thought that she [Hutchinson] was a really credible witness.”
