About 15 former staffers and officials in the Trump administration are planning to meet next week to discuss how to “try and stop” former President Donald Trump and the “extremism, that kind of violence and rhetoric” that “continues to divide our country,” former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Thursday on CNN.
Other members of the group besides Grisham include former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, former national security official Olivia Troye and Trump’s short-time communications director Anthony Scaramucci, Grisham told Reuters.
Members of the group have been watching Trump “continue to manipulate and spread this big lie and continue to harm our country,” Grisham said. After “some informal chats,” members “started throwing around ideas of what we could do, how we could formalize it,” she added.
It “will be important for people” who are still supporting Trump to “hear from people who actually worked with him day in, day out, worked with a lot of people in his inner circle,” Grisham said.
Grisham said she hopes to travel the country to speak to Trump supporters in an effort to help them understand “who he is.” He “cares about no one but himself,” she added.
“This man is a master manipulator. He gets people to do his bidding. I was one of them,” Grisham noted. “I want to explain who he really is .... I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and do what I can.”
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple is skeptical that the group will make much headway with Trump loyalists. The members of the group so far named don’t carry a lot of clout with Trump supporters, nor even much name recognition, noted Wemple. While Grisham wrote a book about her White House experiences, she never held a single press conference while in her post. Scaramucci was in office for only 10 days.
Though they may have had some influence with Trump supporters when they were in the White House, that’s no longer the case, Wemple cautioned.
Check out Grisham’s full CNN interview in the video clip up top.