- Stephanie Grisham was not fond of Hope Hicks, a close aide to former President Donald Trump.
- In her memoir, the former White House press secretary said that Hicks “had taken the easy way out” in getting “a cushy job” at Fox.
- Hicks left the White House in March 2018 but rejoined the administration in March 2020.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
While working at the White House, former communications director Hope Hicks was a longtime favorite of former President Donald Trump, serving at the outset his presidency until departing for a position at Fox and then returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
However, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was not too fond Hicks, as she details in her forthcoming memoir, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now.”
In a section of the book that was adapted and published by Politico, Grisham describes how Hicks, who initially served in the administration from January 2017 to March 2018, was likely “stressed out” in explaining the aide’s exit.
“I think she had been understandably stressed out by the communications director job and didn’t like the fact that she had been subpoenaed and had had to testify in the Robert Mueller investigation (during which she admitted to congressional investigators that she had, in her words, told some tiny “white lies” on behalf of the president). She was also being hounded by the paparazzi about her personal life,” Grisham wrote.
However, Grisham went on to explain the distaste that she held for Hicks, especially after the advisor returned to the White House in March 2020 after serving as the chief communications officer at Fox. While working at Fox, Hicks reportedly maintained ties with White House officials, according to CNN.
“She had left for a sabbatical at Fox, where she had a great title and reportedly made close to $2 million. I can’t pretend that her presence didn’t irritate me. In my eyes and the eyes of others who had stayed to deal with all of the craziness, Hope had taken the easy way out. We all would have loved to take a cushy job somewhere else for two years so that we would be begged to come back to the White House to ‘save’ the administration,” she wrote.
In her second stint at the White House, Hicks served as a counselor to Trump until her final departure in January during the waning days of the administration.
In the memoir, Grisham futher described the atmosphere of the White House under Trump in unflattering terms, deriding it as “a hot mess.”
“I can give you endless metaphors to describe the Trump White House from a press person’s perspective – living in a house that was always on fire or in an insane asylum where you couldn’t tell the difference between the patients and the attendants or on a roller coaster that never stopped – but trust me, it was a hot mess 24/7,” she wrote. “How people did the job without going crazy was a question in itself.”
During her tenure as White House press secretary, Grisham never conducted regular briefings, but instead chose to conduct television interviews with favored media outlets.
She resigned as the chief of staff and press secretary to first lady Melania Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
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