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Stephanie Grisham: Sarah Sanders Part Deux?


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Apparently Stephanie Grisham hasn't read anything by Rick Wilson ("Everything Trump Touches Dies"), so she's stepping into Sarah's empty shoes. "Another person agrees to work as White House press secretary"

Spoiler

Before she accepted the job of White House press secretary under President Trump, Stephanie Grisham would have been well advised to take a peek at the Twitter bio of Sean Spicer. He was the first disastrous press secretary to toil under Trump. His bio reads: “President of RigWil, Sr Advisor @AmericaFirstPAC check out seanspicer.com Horrable speller, @RedSox/@Patriots fan. Author of #TheBriefing.”

Which is to say, Spicer’s career has lost some altitude since his lie-filled half-year fronting for the Trump administration. From his first day on the job, Spicer found that his mission was to lie on behalf of the president, which is why he attempted to revise the historicity of Trump’s inaugural crowd. Things never got better.

Grisham — communications director for first lady Melania Trump — was surely watching the sequel under press secretary Sarah Sanders. So distasteful was the work of briefing the media that Sanders often brought in administration officials to gobble up time, and she made sure to usually limit her own appearances to about 20 minutes. There was always some reason or other that she had to hurry through the proceedings.

And like Spicer, Sanders lied in accordance with the job’s requirements. There’s no alternative when the boss is a full-time liar who demands 100 percent loyalty. For example, the Mueller report nailed her lying in defense of the president’s decision to fire then-FBI Director James B. Comey in May 2017; Sanders claimed that “countless” FBI officials had contacted the White House in support of the firing. Total garbage.

Sanders hasn’t held a formal press briefing since the Mueller report. It has been 105 days since the last briefing.

Grisham isn’t merely sliding into Sanders’s shrinking portfolio; she’ll also serve as White House communications director, a position geared toward strategizing for future rollouts, announcements and the like. On top of all that, Grisham will also stay on as spokeswoman for the first lady.

As Sarah Ellison noted in this Post profile, Grisham was a “lowly” wrangler for the Trump-following press starting in 2015 and has stuck around. She’s known for her strong counterattacks to bad press as well as skilled infighting. In fall 2018, staffers for the first lady grappled with deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel as they prepared for Melania Trump’s Africa trip. East Wing complaints about Ricardel landed on deaf ears, so Grisham released this stunner of a statement about Ricardel: “It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.” Ricardel was soon gone.

Back in 2012, Grisham did a stint on the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, a fellow who poses a contrast with Trump. As Republicans went, Romney wasn’t big on media-blaming. But times have changed:

Once you go a little in on “fake news,” why not go all in on “fake news”?

Commentators are now riffing on Grisham’s background and tendencies in an effort to divine what’s ahead. Yet we know what’s ahead: more vigorous defense of lying. Perhaps Grisham will do it with a little more or a little less poise than Sanders. What a cliffhanger.

 

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Will there be press briefings again, do you think? Because if she's gonna do the job Sarah did, well... that didn't amount to much, did it? 

She's probably yet another bludger getting paid with taxpayer money for doing nothing.

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So Sarah II is likely going to be even worse than the original model: "New White House press secretary yanked Arizona reporters’ access after critical coverage"

Spoiler

On April 5, 2016, Hank Stephenson checked his email and saw that he had a new message from Stephanie Grisham. “Attached please find the form that you requested for the cursory background check we have discussed,” Grisham, then the press secretary for the Republican majority in the Arizona House of Representatives, wrote. “Really appreciate everyone’s willingness to work with us.”

Stephenson, who at the time was a reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times, initially hadn’t thought too much about what Grisham claimed was a new security protocol. That was about to change.

“At first it was kind of like, eh, whatever,” he told The Washington Post. “And then, they explained what they would want.”

Grisham asked members of the Arizona press corps to consent to what Stephenson called an “invasive” background check into reporters’ addresses, driving records, and criminal and civil histories. Journalists could decline, but if they did, they would be banned from the state’s House floor, which was the only place to reliably buttonhole lawmakers. As the only Arizona journalist whose full-time job was covering the state House, Stephenson spent a good deal of his time on the floor.

Reporters quickly came to suspect the policy was, in fact, specifically designed to retaliate against Stephenson, whose reporting had revealed how Republican House Speaker David Gowan used state-owned vehicles to travel thousands of miles while running for Congress, and ultimately forced the lawmaker to return more than $12,000 to the state. Under the new rules, reporters would be barred from the floor for violent felony convictions such as assault and rape — as well as, oddly, misdemeanor trespassing. Stephenson, perhaps not coincidentally, had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing in 2014 after an incident at a bar in rural Arizona.

“As soon as we looked at it, we knew this was just a way to get rid of me,” Stephenson, who now edits a subscription-only tip sheet for Arizona politics, told The Post on Tuesday night.

Grisham, for her part, denied that Stephenson was being singled out. The policy was rescinded days later, after every member of the Phoenix press corps refused to sign the form and even some Republican lawmakers raised concerns. But the flap came to be the most high-profile controversy to define her tenure in Arizona, though it wasn’t the only time she was accused of yanking press credentials for Stephenson’s paper in response to his critical coverage.

As The Washington Post’s Emily Heil and Paul Farhi reported, Grisham, 42, who on Tuesday was named the new White House press secretary, developed a reputation for being combative and critical of the media during her time as communications director for first lady Melania Trump. In Arizona, she remains well-liked by the press, even though the relationship could be contentious at times.

“Reporter ban notwithstanding, journalists and other public relations professionals described Grisham as good-natured and responsive,” the Phoenix New Times reported on Tuesday, after the White House’s announcement was made public. The Arizona Republic, likewise, noted that though her bosses were often mired in controversy, Grisham “largely remained accessible to the media.”

In fact, Stephenson still regards Grisham as his favorite of all the spokespeople he’s worked with. “I’m not exactly sure why,” he admitted. As a spokeswoman, Grisham was always friendly and responsive to his inquiries, he said. She understood that he was just doing his job and didn’t take his sometimes-pointed questions too personally. Other Arizona reporters he’s spoken with feel the same way, he added, and at the end of the day, Grisham was “somebody you can have a drink with” and set work aside.

“Of anyone, I should have the most reason to dislike Grisham,” he said. “But I just can’t bring myself to dislike her all that much.”

Grisham, who couldn’t immediately be reached for comment regarding her time in Arizona, became embroiled in the state’s overheated politics in 2013, following a stint on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

As the Arizona Mirror reported, she took a job as the spokeswoman for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who was coping with the fallout from an FBI investigation into alleged campaign finance violations. When Horne ran for reelection the following year, Grisham ended up engulfed in another scandal when she and other staffers were accused of doing campaign work while on the clock as state employees. Horne ultimately ended up paying a $10,000 fine but was largely cleared of the charges stemming from the FBI’s earlier investigation.

After the 2014 state election, Grisham became the spokeswoman for Gowan, the newly elected Arizona house speaker, who raised eyebrows when he approved a budget that would require cutbacks at state agencies, then began redecorating the House of Representatives at taxpayers’ expense. Stephenson wrote about how Gowan had approved spending more than $1 million on the renovations, which included paying to have lawmakers’ chairs reupholstered.

His reporting on lawmakers’ use of state vehicles, however, soured his relationship with House Republicans. Four hours after the story was published, the Capitol Times was notified that their access to cover the opening day of the legislative session had been revoked. In an email, Grisham claimed that there wouldn’t be space for the paper’s reporters.

“When I called Grisham to get an explanation, she made no bones about the fact that the paper’s access had been pulled because of the story,” Jim Small, the paper’s editor at the time, later wrote in a note to readers. Though the decision was later reversed, the hostility continued.

In subsequent months, Small wrote, the paper was pressured to assign Stephenson to another beat, and a state House staffer “suggested all access issues would be resolved if Stephenson was dismissed from his job.” A letter from the caucus’s attorney accused Stephenson of “rude and inappropriate conduct” on the House floor, claiming without evidence that he typed on his computer during the daily prayers and was overly aggressive when questioning lawmakers. When he learned that Stephenson would be barred from the floor because of the new security policy, Small rejected Grisham’s claim that the move wasn’t intended as payback. Small categorized it as an attack on the press.

To this day, Stephenson says, he still hasn’t gotten a good answer on whether Grisham herself thought up the short-lived policy, or if other displeased staffers were behind it.

“What we do know is that she was tasked with delivering the news on these orders to reporters,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s fair to say that she carried out her duties with glee, but she was a loyal soldier.”

Grisham’s relationship with the Arizona press corps was frostier after the dust-up, but Stephenson said things remained cordial until April 2017, when he wrote a story exposing how she had hit the road as part of President Trump’s transition team while still getting paid by the Arizona House of Representatives.

Though Grisham took an unpaid leave of absence to work on the campaign, she was added back on the state’s payroll after the 2016 election, and earned roughly $19,000 over the course of eight weeks. During that time, Stephenson found, she didn’t send a single email from her official account or write a single news release, and there was no evidence that she had done any other work for the state. Grisham didn’t respond to his requests for comment, but Stephenson tracked her social media posts and found she had been traveling all over the country on behalf of the president-elect, while also making time for some sun at Mar-a-Lago.

Grisham threatened to sue over the story, Stephenson said, and he later learned that she had blocked him from viewing her personal Twitter account. But he still has no hard feelings.

“She was the kind of person who very much defends her boss publicly,” he recalled. “Talks the talking points. But at the end of the day she’s surprisingly human, I guess.”

His advice to White House reporters?

“Expect hard and constant pushback, but also a halfway decent source of information,” he said. “Someone who returns your call, at least.”

 

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Re: Everything Trump Touches Dies:

A lot of the women he pawed are still alive though.

 

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Only the best people...

 

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I was fully expecting that my first post about Grisham on the job would be snarky. Never would it have entered my mind that I would be sympathetic towards her. Of course I might remark that they shouldn't have been there in the first place, and that this is what you can expect from rubbing shoulders with murderous dictators, but nobody deserves an altercation like this that leaves you with bruises. Even if you're a willing part of this hateful administration.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Nothing like being thrown under the bus by a manic toddler:

 

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Trump has a press secretary? How could I forget?

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7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Trump has a press secretary? How could I forget?

Yeah, not hearing much anything from the person who should be one of the highest profile people in the administration. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, the WH didn't do background check on the president's spokesperson or maybe they knew and didn't care? One would think two DUIs should be disqualifying, but maybe they were desperate for someone to take the job. 

Anyway, she's now attempted to b*tch slap WAPO because they didn't fawn over Trump's "decision" to forgive student loans of disabled vets, except WAPO clearly did cover it as a Trump policy mandate and it wasn't a new policy specific to Trump. 

She's clearly in over her head.  #lowenergy  #sad

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  • 2 months later...

Suuure Steph, we believe you.  /sarcasm

 

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13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Suuure Steph, we believe you.  /sarcasm

 

What I find hilarious is that her own statement implies that she has also given untruthful and inaccurate statements, and she, the press secretary, who should know how language works, should know that. Freudian slip, perhaps?

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Gee, she lied about more stuff. Color me surprised. NOT: "Trump press secretary faces backlash over claim that Obama aides left ‘you will fail’ notes"

Spoiler

The White House is facing fresh allegations of dishonesty after press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed without evidence that aides to former president Barack Obama left behind disparaging messages around the White House on the day President Trump was inaugurated.

During a radio interview Tuesday, Grisham said that White House aides left “Obama books” throughout the White House and taped a big “You will fail” sign on the door of the press office before Trump aides moved in — claims that sparked a chorus of condemnation from former Obama administration officials.

Grisham then modified her assertions later in the day, changing key parts of her story and saying she viewed the alleged conduct as little more than a harmless prank.

“This is another bald faced lie,” Susan E. Rice, who was serving as Obama’s national security adviser through the end of his administration, wrote Tuesday on Twitter in response to Grisham’s initial remarks.

“This is absolutely not true,” wrote Chris Lu, who served as White House Cabinet secretary during the Obama administration. “Obama repeatedly and publicly praised Bush cooperation during 2009 transition, and pledged we would provide same cooperation to whoever followed us. And that’s what we did.”

Grisham did not provide evidence to back up her allegations. No other administration official has made any similar allegations publicly in the 34 months since Trump entered the White House.

Five former senior administration officials present on Day One in 2017 said they do not remember witnessing or hearing of any notes like the ones that Grisham described.

“Not in my office,” said one of the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in contradicting the press secretary.

Grisham made the initial allegation during an interview with the John Fredericks radio show after the host asked her why the Trump White House had failed to fully staff the administration with loyalists from its earliest days.

Grisham responded by alleging that the administration faced an uphill battle from the very beginning, including open disdain from Obama aides who left behind hostile messages as they departed their offices.

“When we came into the White House, I’ll tell you something, every office was filled with Obama books, and we had notes left behind that said ‘You will fail,’ ‘You aren’t going to make it,’ ” she said. “In the press office, there was a big note taped to a door that said that ‘You will fail.’ ”

Brandi Hoffine, who served as a press aide during the Obama administration, said on Twitter that when she left the lower press office on Jan. 19, 2017, “the only notes left in that room when we turned out the lights were words of encouragement.”

A Washington Post reporter who walked through the White House press office on the evening before Trump’s inauguration found a positive note on the desk of former press secretary Josh Earnest, addressed to his successor, Sean Spicer.

In response to Obama aides pushing back on her allegations, Grisham issued a statement softening her initial claims and calling the controversy “silly.”

“I’m not sure where their offices were, and certainly wasn’t implying every office had that issue,” Grisham said. “I was talking specifically (and honestly) about our experience in the lower press office — nowhere else. I don’t know why everyone is so sensitive!”

“Stephanie is correct that there were nasty grams left in the press office,” tweeted Michael Short, a former White House spokesman who worked in the “lower press” part of the White House. He did not say what the notes said.

A second former White House staffer said officials found a Russian vodka bottle in “lower press” and that Grisham found an anti-Trump note.

The notes were “taped up in the cupboards,” this aide said.

Grisham’s follow-up statement differed significantly from her allegations that “every office was filled with Obama books” and that “there was a big note taped to a door that said ‘You will fail.’ ”

“The books were inside the cabinets of lower press, as was one of the notes, which was taped inside,” she wrote, referring to a single office within the White House complex. “I believe others have come out saying this was true. Either way — this shouldn’t be a big deal.”

Several Trump administration officials who have gone on to write tell-all books, including some who worked in the White House press office, have never publicly mentioned seeing such letters or notes posted on doors or inside cabinets. While smartphones are ubiquitous among White House officials, no photos or copies of any alleged notes have surfaced since Trump was sworn in.

“We would have taken pictures of it and posted it everywhere,” said one former official who disputed Grisham’s account.

In her statement responding to the backlash Tuesday, Grisham said that she viewed the negative notes and Obama books “as kind of a prank, and something that always happened.” She also highlighted the fact that she personally received “a lovely note” from an Obama White House aide when she arrived.

But in the radio interview, she cast the alleged conduct in far more negative terms and used it to make the broader point that Obama aides — and career officials who continued to serve under Trump — had been vindictive and had worked to undermine the new president.

“It was sad; it was pathetic,” she said. “When we leave in six years, I fully intend to leave a note in my [successor’s] drawer, saying, ‘Good luck to you.’ I don’t care if it’s a Dem or a Republican — you’re serving your country. It’s the highest honor in the world. So if these people couldn’t recognize and stay above that — that was on them.”

Several former Obama administration officials said they left behind only positive messages for the incoming Trump administration officials. Joanna Rosholm, press secretary for former first lady Michelle Obama, posted on Twitter a copy of a letter she left in the White House.

“Welcome to the small family of White House Staffers, past and present,” she wrote. “The bond we all share transcends politics. I want you to know that I am always available if you have questions, just as Mrs. Bush’s staff was for us. No question is too big or too small.”

The two previous White House press secretaries under Trump have also faced allegations that they lacked candor or misled the public.

Spicer admitted that he made a mistake when he falsely claimed during his first press briefing that the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was the largest in history. It was not.

Former press secretary Sarah Sanders told federal investigators that she had not been accurate when she said during a 2017 press briefing that she had heard from “countless” FBI agents who supported Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey. That claim was not based on anything, Sanders told investigators from then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office.

 

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In her own awful way, Sarah Sanders was brutally effective and smart, in the same awful way that Kellyanne is smart.   I suspect that Sanders was key in developing strategies and talking points.  She could stay obnoxiously on point.  

Grisham is not smart or effective; she is obnoxious. 

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  • 1 month later...

Remind me what taxpayers are paying for again?

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10 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:
Remind me what taxpayers are paying for again?

In this woman's case? I have no idea. An office to sit in? A phone or two? Probably a personal assistant to run her errands for her? Health insurance for her, certainly. Probably a big travel allowance. Probably a stylist and makeup artist on hand in case she shows up somewhere officially.

Otherwise, a list off the top of my head:

Golf, McDonalds/KFC/Various other fast foods, security, bodyguards for the Trump family, room and board for the president, room and board (at Trump properties!) for his security detail, travel on the biggest private plane available, Diet Coke on demand, travel and accommodations to and from rallies to boost the president's ego. Drones. People to tape back together notes Trump tore up like a toddler. Translators and editors to turn important briefings into short comics, charts, and sound bites at a 3rd grade level for the president. 

Things Taxpayers are NOT paying for:

healthcare (with their taxes, anyway), competent leaders in the White House. Thankfully, a wall on the Southern border. 

 

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28 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

In this woman's case? I have no idea. An office to sit in? A phone or two? Probably a personal assistant to run her errands for her? Health insurance for her, certainly. Probably a big travel allowance. Probably a stylist and makeup artist on hand in case she shows up somewhere officially.

Otherwise, a list off the top of my head:

Golf, McDonalds/KFC/Various other fast foods, security, bodyguards for the Trump family, room and board for the president, room and board (at Trump properties!) for his security detail, travel on the biggest private plane available, Diet Coke on demand, travel and accommodations to and from rallies to boost the president's ego. Drones. People to tape back together notes Trump tore up like a toddler. Translators and editors to turn important briefings into short comics, charts, and sound bites at a 3rd grade level for the president. 

Things Taxpayers are NOT paying for:

healthcare (with their taxes, anyway), competent leaders in the White House. Thankfully, a wall on the Southern border. 

 

Also: travel to and from the Fox News studio 

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Great perspective piece: "Stephanie Grisham is not the worst-ever White House press secretary. Here’s why."

Spoiler

Hearing Joe Lockhart talk about his old job as White House press secretary almost seems quaint.

The idealism: “Your main job is to advocate for the press within the government.”

The talk about facts: “You have to make sure that the information going out to the American public and to the world is accurate and complete.”

And the reason for daily briefings: “They tend to force decisions to get made in a sensible way — they reduce impetuousness and procrastination.”

And when things get particularly ugly — as, for example, during the period when his boss, Bill Clinton, was being impeached — the need for briefings is even greater, he said, because the public is justifiably more hungry for information.

Given that the 30th person to hold the job, Stephanie Grisham, has never held a briefing since she got the title in July, is she really a press secretary?

“That’s an easy one,” Lockhart told me. “She doesn’t do any of the important parts of the job, so no.”

President Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives and has brought the nation to the brink of a war with Iran.

But still, when it comes to publicly answering questions on behalf of the White House, from the official podium and with the world watching, Grisham remains silent.

Cowardly.

She aggressively tweets, of course — often disparaging journalists — and frequently makes appearances on the Trump propaganda network, Fox News, or the even more right wing and equally friendly OANN. (She’s made only a few more mainstream appearances.)

She even co-wrote an offensive op-ed piece harshly criticizing two Washington Post reporters for an accurate story that Trump didn’t like.

Grisham is under particular pressure at the moment, with authors Stephen King and Don Winslow offering to give $200,000 to charity if she’ll hold a 60-minute briefing to take questions from reporters.

As King tweeted: “All you have to do is YOUR DAMN JOB.” (Grisham responded in a CNN interview: “Donations should never come with strings attached.”)

She shows no signs of relenting. She’s said that she thinks reporters use the briefings to grandstand and that Trump is accessible to reporters in other ways.

Nor is she likely to be swayed by an opinion piece signed by more than a dozen former White House press secretaries and other high-level government spokespeople, who served administrations led by both parties.

Their names are familiar — mostly because we remember seeing them at regular briefings: Jay Carney, Dee Dee Myers, Scott McClellan, Victoria Clarke, Robert Gibbs, Mike McCurry.

Acknowledging that the world of media has changed dramatically in recent years, the piece makes the case that official briefings are even more important now.

“On social media platforms, wild rumors can fly and our adversaries can manipulate disinformation to their advantage,” said a draft that was due to be published on CNN’s website.

“For that reason, among many, the country needs trusted sources of information . . . delivered on a timely and repeatable schedule.”

Lockhart reminded me that the daily briefings really were very frequent: In a typical month during his tenure, he said, there would probably be 20 official briefings and perhaps just as many informal gaggles.

Grisham, of course, took her place in a less-than-distinguished line of Trump-era press secretaries or communications directors. Sean Spicer peddled lies about the inauguration crowd on his first day. Sarah Sanders exuded contempt. And Anthony Scaramucci flamed out in days.

But they did hold briefings, though an ever-dwindling number of them.

There’s little in Grisham’s background to suggest she would perform well on the podium under assertive questioning seeking detailed, credible information.

Yes, she had previous campaign experience and served as press secretary to first lady Melania Trump, but she also was let go from two earlier, nonpolitical jobs after claims of plagiarism and cheating on expense reports.

She is, however, a terrific sycophant, quick to say about former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly: “He was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.” Or to eagerly agree with Trump that his critics are “human scum.”

Grisham seems unaware — or simply doesn’t care — that she actually works for the American people and is paid with their tax dollars. In an October email exchange with my colleague Paul Farhi, she described her job differently from how her predecessors see it.

“It is literally my job to support and defend the President,” she said.

Granted, her predecessors could be expert spinners, not always able to be fully forthcoming, sometimes obfuscating — but usually with the underlying sense that they were there to do a job on behalf of the public and the media, as well as the administration.

There generally was some sense of higher purpose, of loyalty to something greater than “the boss.”

Pure fealty is not anything close to an adequate job description for the White House press secretary.

Which, along with Grisham’s performance to date, is why she’s can’t be described as the worst ever.

She may hold the title but she’s not doing the job.

 

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She's not as entertaining or informative as Carmen Sandiego: "The Grisham Watch: What’s the White House press secretary up to?"

Spoiler

Everyone knows what White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham isn’t doing. Since assuming her post last summer, she hasn’t held a single formal briefing, continuing an outage that began under her predecessor, Sarah Sanders. The last White House press briefing took place on March 11, 2019.

As the White House races toward the one-year briefing-drought mark, the Erik Wemple Blog figured it would be a good time to launch The Grisham Watch, the better to routinize scrutiny of the press secretary’s activities. When she accepted the job of press secretary, she also took on the role of White House communications director — essentially strategizing rollouts of initiatives, messaging, branding, etc. — while retaining her job as the first lady’s communications director.

In an email to this blog, Grisham confirmed that she retains those three roles.

Today would have been a fine day to step up to the podium in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. There have been multiple developments on the impeachment front, including the cable-news interviews of Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani who participated in a shadow diplomacy campaign to secure considerations from Ukrainian officials. There’s a trade deal with China that could well ease long-standing concerns and obstacles facing U.S. businesses. There are revelations about how Trump treated high-ranking military personnel and diplomats in a famous meeting, as documented in a new book excerpt from Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.

Plus: The president’s schedule is light, consisting of an event with the LSU football team and a departure for Mar-a-Lago.

As of posting time, however, there was no briefing.

The Erik Wemple Blog asked Grisham this morning what she was up to. She has a strong record of returning our email inquiries, and she responded with this list:

Phone calls w press beginning around 5:45 for AM shows

Met with 7 members of my staff (separately) on internal staff matters

Met with the legal team

Met w the POTUS

Spoke to FLOTUS on a few issues

Face timed my son to tell him to have a good day at school

Mtg in the sit room

Two mtgs with the [chief of staff] on two separate issues

Mtg with my comms team on impeachment and Davos next week

Mtg with the Advance team on Davos and press access/movements

As of this moment I have eaten two saltine crackers and had three cups of coffee

Reading through talking points and messaging for next week so I can approve dissemination

Ive used the restroom twice

In between all of that I have received countless texts and emails from reporters and other agency comms people, all of which I try to stay on top of — keeping in mind I am often in meetings that require my phone remain outside

Oh, and now taking the time to explain my day to you.

Grisham’s accounting was sent to the Erik Wemple Blog at 1:55 p.m.

When she is asked about the absence of briefings, Grisham doesn’t talk about her workload. Rather, she points out that the president very frequently answers questions from reporters at ceremonial events, trip departures and so on. She is right about that, as Trump outpaces his predecessors in Q&A sessions. The problem is that those sessions generate additional Qs along with few genuine As, which makes the briefings all the more essential.

Another reason for no briefings, she says, is that reporters abuse them. “They don’t want information, because my team and I give them information every single day. . . . They want a moment, they want their moment on TV so they can peddle their books,” Grisham said during an appearance on Fox News on Thursday.

So we checked with Grisham: Do your three roles at the White House prevent you from doing briefings?

“I prioritize everything I do each day — have to with three roles — so if the day ever comes I will prioritize and make the time,” responds Grisham.

She also added: “[It’s] my opinion that with the Press Secretary up there it has turned into more shouting and arguing and gotcha moments over substantive back and forth, which is why I have Cabinet Secretaries and other subject matter experts out there when needed.”

Here’s a deal: Should Grisham reinstitute the press briefings, we’ll stop asking her what she’s up to.

She included that she used the restroom on her list of activities. Good grief.

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2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

She's not as entertaining or informative as Carmen Sandiego: "The Grisham Watch: What’s the White House press secretary up to?"

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Everyone knows what White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham isn’t doing. Since assuming her post last summer, she hasn’t held a single formal briefing, continuing an outage that began under her predecessor, Sarah Sanders. The last White House press briefing took place on March 11, 2019.

As the White House races toward the one-year briefing-drought mark, the Erik Wemple Blog figured it would be a good time to launch The Grisham Watch, the better to routinize scrutiny of the press secretary’s activities. When she accepted the job of press secretary, she also took on the role of White House communications director — essentially strategizing rollouts of initiatives, messaging, branding, etc. — while retaining her job as the first lady’s communications director.

In an email to this blog, Grisham confirmed that she retains those three roles.

Today would have been a fine day to step up to the podium in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. There have been multiple developments on the impeachment front, including the cable-news interviews of Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani who participated in a shadow diplomacy campaign to secure considerations from Ukrainian officials. There’s a trade deal with China that could well ease long-standing concerns and obstacles facing U.S. businesses. There are revelations about how Trump treated high-ranking military personnel and diplomats in a famous meeting, as documented in a new book excerpt from Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.

Plus: The president’s schedule is light, consisting of an event with the LSU football team and a departure for Mar-a-Lago.

As of posting time, however, there was no briefing.

The Erik Wemple Blog asked Grisham this morning what she was up to. She has a strong record of returning our email inquiries, and she responded with this list:

Phone calls w press beginning around 5:45 for AM shows

Met with 7 members of my staff (separately) on internal staff matters

Met with the legal team

Met w the POTUS

Spoke to FLOTUS on a few issues

Face timed my son to tell him to have a good day at school

Mtg in the sit room

Two mtgs with the [chief of staff] on two separate issues

Mtg with my comms team on impeachment and Davos next week

Mtg with the Advance team on Davos and press access/movements

As of this moment I have eaten two saltine crackers and had three cups of coffee

Reading through talking points and messaging for next week so I can approve dissemination

Ive used the restroom twice

In between all of that I have received countless texts and emails from reporters and other agency comms people, all of which I try to stay on top of — keeping in mind I am often in meetings that require my phone remain outside

Oh, and now taking the time to explain my day to you.

Grisham’s accounting was sent to the Erik Wemple Blog at 1:55 p.m.

When she is asked about the absence of briefings, Grisham doesn’t talk about her workload. Rather, she points out that the president very frequently answers questions from reporters at ceremonial events, trip departures and so on. She is right about that, as Trump outpaces his predecessors in Q&A sessions. The problem is that those sessions generate additional Qs along with few genuine As, which makes the briefings all the more essential.

Another reason for no briefings, she says, is that reporters abuse them. “They don’t want information, because my team and I give them information every single day. . . . They want a moment, they want their moment on TV so they can peddle their books,” Grisham said during an appearance on Fox News on Thursday.

So we checked with Grisham: Do your three roles at the White House prevent you from doing briefings?

“I prioritize everything I do each day — have to with three roles — so if the day ever comes I will prioritize and make the time,” responds Grisham.

She also added: “[It’s] my opinion that with the Press Secretary up there it has turned into more shouting and arguing and gotcha moments over substantive back and forth, which is why I have Cabinet Secretaries and other subject matter experts out there when needed.”

Here’s a deal: Should Grisham reinstitute the press briefings, we’ll stop asking her what she’s up to.

She included that she used the restroom on her list of activities. Good grief.

It was 2 PM and she'd only eaten two saltines?

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  • 3 weeks later...

She lies like Sarah and Sean:

 

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