I'll Take Your Questions Now Quotes

“It’s so nice when toxic people stop talking to you. It’s like the trash took itself out.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“Trump seemed fixated on dictators, too. It almost seemed as if he admired their toughness and aggression,”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“For the rest of my time in the White House, the president would describe his former national security advisor as unstable, crazy, dangerous, or wanting to start a war. (He also used to say that John Kelly “really sucked.”) That was what Trump did to anyone who left on unsatisfactory terms. It never occurred to him that perhaps that reflected on his hiring practices or that months before he had been singing their praises.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“It is my fervent belief that when you are the common denominator in situations like this, you need to look within and determine where your own responsibility lies. People need to hold themselves accountable to situations so that they can learn from them and apply them in the next chapter of life, and that includes me. I”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“He didn’t ask if the guy was all right, though. As far as I know, that never crossed his mind.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“I also turned a blind eye toward my own falling into a trap I saw over and over again: believing I was a trusted and valued member of Trump World. The plain truth is that most of the Trump family dismisses and cuts people from their lives on a whim. They demand total loyalty, but they are loyal to no one. I don’t blame them, to be honest.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“That was how Trump always got rid of people—behind their back with leaks to the press or on Twitter.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“Jared, who had appointed himself the expert on every problem—from the border wall to trade policy to an unprecedented global pandemic—suddenly claimed that he’d had nothing to do with the mess that was made. I cannot believe I ever found the guy attractive, sincere, or kind. By”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“I had shared with Mrs. Trump many times my opinion that if we lost reelection in 2020 it would be because of Jared. She didn’t disagree with me. It was my fervent opinion that his arrogance and presumption had grown over the years, and he threw his power about with absolutely no shame. I would venture to say that being in the White House changed Jared as a person. There was no reason that he should be sitting with the speechwriter laying out our nation’s plan to fight a global pandemic.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“An address to the nation is serious stuff, and whenever possible you need plenty of time to prepare properly—unless, of course, you were in the Trump White House, where everything was like a clown car on fire running at full speed into a warehouse full of fireworks. A”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“When we traveled to Davos, Trump marveled about the country of Switzerland, which was clean, orderly, and full of rich people—very much his kind of scene. President Germophobe gushed to Swiss president Ueli Maurer, “Everything here is so clean. My hotel room is spotless.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“For a communications person, especially if you actually like politics, White House press secretary is the pinnacle of your profession. In any other administration, if you reach that milestone, you were pretty much guaranteed a lucrative job at a large company, in addition to TV contributor contracts, and speaking engagements once the administration went out. But the Trump White House was different—which may be the biggest understatement ever written.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“And less than a week after General Kelly resigned, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis resigned with a scorching letter to the president that got a ton of attention. So now we’d have a second defense secretary in two years. But that was a whole other drama that I wasn’t really in on.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“At that point on the trip, I was starting to get as fed up with her behavior as the rest of the East Wing team was. Ivanka was constantly getting into the press shots that truly should have been reserved for the president and first lady. It was yet another example of the Kushners putting themselves on the same level as the first couple, and it was unseemly. For Mrs. Trump, it was about protocol and the rules; for all of us as staff, it was about allowing her to be in her role and have the people of the United States see her representing them with dignity and class.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“It was my first direct glimpse of what would become the constant issue of “Javanka” blurring the lines between staff and family and wanting whatever suited them best at the time. It seemed to me that whenever it suited her, Ivanka wanted to be treated as a senior staff expert on whatever issue caught her attention and resented being dismissed as the president’s daughter. At other times, she’d want just the opposite.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“And he said that the country was granting more liberties to women, which he supported. I looked at him as he said that with an expression that was captured in a White House photo by an Associated Press reporter. It was a look of “I don’t know if I believe you, dude.” But he seemed sincere, and I wanted to believe him. Still, what did I know? Saudi Arabia is a savage place for women.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“I loved it and was shocked at all of the similarities between President Trump and Norma Desmond, the lead character in the movie, who was a former silent-film star obsessed with her looks and with making a triumphant return to the screen. Here was a woman who was convinced that everyone loved her and lived in a fantasy world of her own making. I’m sure that Trump had no clue—like none—how similar to him she was.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“Because we had alienated so many of the “normal” Republicans in Washington, a lot of them were either unwilling to join the administration or were put on some do-not-hire list by someone in Trump World.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“Trump always wanted to see how far you would go to do his bidding; it was his way of measuring your loyalty. And it was hard when you were caught in the middle of something like that to keep your bearings. I remembered that lesson when I took over as press secretary and resolved to do whatever I could to avoid having Trump do to me what he’d done to Sean. I wasn’t always successful, but I tried.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“This is not a book, by the way, where you need to like me. I am not trying to win people over or gain moral absolution. But I do think this is something people need to read because I observed a truly unique, scary, bizarre, often funny, riotous, wild, and at times tragic period in our country’s history. I”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“When I say there was a reality TV show mentality to our administration, I’m not kidding. And I am ashamed to say that I lost sight of what I was there to do—serve the country—more than once. That was life with Donald Trump.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“We had nothing new to announce, but that didn’t seem to matter to them, and I had been around long enough to know that there was no use trying to sway that particular group.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“As much as I absolutely did not want to say it and it was certainly not in my voice at all, I was the spokesperson for the president of the United States, so in my mind it was my job to say what I had been told to say, word for word: “I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.” Even thinking about that now, years later, I cover my eyes with shame. I’m sorry, General and Mrs. Kelly, that I didn’t have the nerve to say no. It is one of my biggest regrets.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“I was up front that I would still want to work for Mrs. Trump. Not only did I like the job and had grown comfortable in the role, I had a stupid-ass idea in my head that I’d be able to change the president’s mind on things or do things differently because he would know I had a direct line to his wife.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“we visited the Cape Coast Castle, one of around forty “slave castles” that had served as prisons for slaves en route to the Americas. We were greeted by a tour guide, who walked Mrs. Trump through many rooms and told stories of how the slave trade had begun. We were shown a room that had held hundreds of men and women, with tiny windows that barely let in light. There was a small ditch dug down the middle of the room, maybe six inches deep and wide, and it was explained to us that it had been used as a bathroom. Each room was horrible, and the tour guide was brilliant in the way he told us the grim and heartbreaking story of the way the people kept there had lived. And when I say brilliant, I mean that he told it in a way that we almost lived it—we felt their pain, their misery, almost understood what it must have been like to be treated as cattle. The thought that human beings were held in such horrific conditions until they were placed on ships in the middle of the night, only to live in even worse conditions until they arrived at their destination, was hard to stomach. There were rooms for the women that were equally as brutal. We stopped at an altar to pay tribute to all those who had lost their lives and those who had lived under such cruel circumstances. I remember feeling distinctly ashamed that that had ever been allowed to happen and about our country’s complicity, since so many of the people had been shipped to the United States. Mrs. Trump felt deeply impacted as well. In conversations later that day she said, “I did not know. The conditions were so horrible. Did you see the rooms? How can people do that? Everyone should see these things, and we should talk about it openly.” We all, of course, knew about and abhorred slavery, but were less familiar with all the details of its brutal origins. The emotional visit concluded with Mrs. Trump walking through the “door of no return,” the door that the people had left through to be loaded onto ships to be taken to the various countries that used slave labor.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“While at the school in Malawi, the children had kept asking us to take photos of them on our phones so that they could see what they looked like. Suffice it to say, we were all surprised that many people there did not own mirrors and so the children literally didn’t know what they looked like. As soon as we returned to the United States, she wanted us to send full-length mirrors to the school. “We need to send the school mirrors. Children need to know what they look like and see that they are very strong or very beautiful.” She was insistent that the children should be able to look at themselves and know their self-worth.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“two things were often weaponized and used against people in the Trump administration, even if there was no reason: the security clearance process and the launch of internal investigations. Either could be deadly to a person’s reputation, and the news of them often leaked to sympathetic reporters in the press. All anyone had to do to launch such an attack was mention inappropriate behavior to an allied senior staff person and an investigation was opened, which in turn could cost the person accused his or her security clearance or even job. The outcome of the investigation was often beside the point. Just being “under investigation” hurt your reputation inside and outside the building.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“In an administration careening from crisis to crisis, the best way to look good was to be seen as putting out fires—even if you’d lit them yourself.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“In fact, this book may be the first and only time anyone has told President Trump that a corpse and a dog flew inside Air Force One, at the same time, on his watch.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

“Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as though it were in the air-conditioning system.”
― Stephanie Grisham, I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House