Former President Trump's former White House press secretary told delegates at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday that Trump, when not in the public eye, would mock his supporters and refer to them as “basement dwellers.”
Stephanie Grisham, who said she would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, began her speech at Chicago’s United Center by saying, “I wasn’t just a Trump supporter. I was a true believer, one of his closest advisers.”
He compared the Trump family to his own family, saying he spent Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's at Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. But then he spoke about Trump's character.
“I saw it when the cameras were off,” Grisham said. “Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters; he calls them ‘basement dwellers.’ On a hospital visit, when people were dying in the ICU, he got angry because the cameras weren’t looking at him. He has no empathy. He has no morals. And he’s not true to the truth.”
Grisham is among a handful of Republicans appearing at the convention to denounce Trump and endorse Harris.
To applause, Grisham said she was the first senior White House official to resign on January 6, 2021, the day Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. “I could no longer be a part of this madness,” she said.
Referring to Trump, she added: “He used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie. Say it enough and people will believe you. ’ But it does matter. What you say matters, and what you don’t say matters.”
Grisham said that when she was press secretary, she was “criticized for never having a press conference at the White House. It’s because, unlike my boss, I never wanted to get up on that podium and lie.”
