Grisham: Graham ‘was using Trump to mop up the freebies like there was no tomorrow’

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham took on Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in her new book, writing that the veteran lawmaker was using former President Trump to “mop up the freebies like there was no tomorrow.”

Grisham, in her new book “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” set to be released on Tuesday, writes that Graham would use the president to receive free rounds of golf, food and access to celebrities.

“It struck me that he was using Trump to mop up the freebies like there was no tomorrow (seems that he still is). He would show up at Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster to play free rounds of golf, stuff his face with free food, and hang out with Trump and his celebrity pals,” Grisham writes, according to Insider, which obtained a copy of the book.

Grisham recounts a specific instance when she saw Graham, whom she referred to as “Senator Freeloader,” at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club.

She writes that Graham “kicked out a White House staff member so he could take her room,” before recalling a comment he made to her about easy living at the golf club.

“Senator Freeloader was sitting at a table by the pool, a big grin on his face, lapping up the goodies he was getting like some potentate. He said to me, with a creepy little smile, ‘Isn’t this great? Man, this is the life,’ ” Grisham writes, according to Insider.

She said she walked away from the encounter thinking, “Yes it is, but it’s not your life — it’s the president’s life.”

“There was something so gross and tacky about his behavior during that trip that the image never left me,” Grisham writes.

The scene is just one of a number of revelations included in Grisham’s highly anticipated book, which is scheduled to hit shelves this week.

News organizations have been publishing excerpts from the memoir throughout the past week, documenting episodes involving a number of top figures in the White House, including the former president, Melania and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Grisham writes that Graham, whom she grouped with other “hangers-on,” spent a considerable amount of time at the former president’s properties.

“Someone who was almost as frequent a guest at Trump properties as I was Senator Lindsey Graham,” she wrote, according to Insider. “Okay, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. The difference, of course, is that I was there to work.”

She said Graham was “one of the weirder ones” when it came to the “various characters and hangers-on in Trump World.”

“And that’s saying something. He seemed almost schizophrenic,” Grisham wrote. She cited the senator’s frequent change of opinion when it came to Trump.

“Some days he would be one of Trump’s most vigorous defenders; other days he was a harsh critic. People around the president would tell him that he couldn’t trust Graham, but Trump seemed to like him for whatever reason and I often wondered if he sought Lindsey’s approval,” Grisham wrote.

Graham in January, hours after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, slammed the effort by a number of his Republican colleagues to block the certification of the election results, saying on the Senate floor “count me out.”

“Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey,” Graham said. “I hate it being this way. Oh my god I hate it … but today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I tried to be helpful.”

The next day, he said Trump needs to understand that “his actions were the problem, not the solution,” adding that the president’s legacy was “tarnished by yesterday.”

Months later, however, Graham changed his tune. In May he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity during an interview that the Republican Party can’t move forward without Trump.

The Hill reached out to Graham for comment.