Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said that she witnessed first-hand former President Trump’s alleged sexual harassment, describing it as “really bad, to the point that I was extremely uncomfortable.”
During an appearance on CNN earlier this week, Grisham detailed the harassment she observed while working under the then-president. She added that she wanted to protect a specific staffer, who she said Trump would frequently take on trips with him.
Grisham also detailed an incident in which Trump called a staffer to come back to “look at her ass.”
“He one time had one of my other deputies bring her back so that they could look at her ass, is what he said to him,” Grisham said. “I sat down and talked to her at one point, asked her if she was uncomfortable.”
“I tried everything I could to ensure she was never alone with him,” she added.
While she noted that Trump would frequently comment on people’s looks and speculate about cosmetic surgery, Grisham said the harassment against the specific staffer was particularly alarming.
“But with this one staffer, it was really bad, to the point that I was extremely uncomfortable,” Grisham said. “I did everything I could to keep her off of trips actually, and to stay with her if she was with him alone because I was really nervous about what could happen.”
The former Trump spokeswoman noted that senior staffers also knew about the situation at the time. She claimed she had spoken to various chiefs of staff, such as Mark Meadows, about the issue.
“I think, at the end of the day, what could they do other than go in there and say, ‘This isn’t good, Sir’?” she said. “Donald Trump will do what Donald Trump wants to do.”
Grisham’s statements come just a day after a New York civil court found Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and later defamed her when he denied her claims. Trump criticized the verdict, lashing out at the judge and jury on his social media platform Truth Social.
“The partisan Judge & Jury on the just concluded Witch Hunt Trial should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for allowing such a travesty of Justice to take place,” Trump wrote on the platform.