Former Trump staffer says horrible no-good week has president 'melting down'

Stephanie Grisham is a former communications person for President Donald Trump in his first term, and she says she recognizes what drove Trump to try to illegally ban certain news outlets from the White House.

As Trump’s press secretary Grisham told CNN anchor Brianna Marie Keilar that Trump tasked her with the impossible job of getting the press corps off the White House grounds, even if that means searching for stragglers off the grounds.

“And I would just say, ‘I'm still working on it. There's a lot to go through with legal.’ And I would just kind of push it off and push it off and stall him. And then obviously I never completed that task, but that's something that I knew was going to happen one day,” she told Keilar.

Having announced a ban of so-called “fake news,” which will likely die in court under a First Amendment argument, Grisham said that it appeared Trump was on a tear and feeling “very, very empowered right now,” based upon his past behavior. But unlike his last term, there appears to be “no guardrails” to keep him acting sane.

“I was hopeful that somebody like [White House staff] Susie Wiles or Dan Scavino would be there doing it … but it seems like he has really surrounded himself with sycophants and … everybody's laughing and thinking it's a great idea. But you know, as always, he's missed the point,” said Grisham. “The economy is terrible. I live in the Midwest, and I can't tell you how many farmers and people who drive water trucks and big equipment are suffering, and people can't afford groceries. They’re suffering and he's not doing anything but these silly projects and these silly little vanity things that he's doing. It doesn't look good. He's so out of touch and he's melting down.”

Panelist and former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told Keiler that the Constitution makes no exception for “fake news,” which makes Trump’s ban look more like a futile outburst or temper tantrum than an actual actionable policy with follow through.

Keiler then asked Grisham what could drive Trump to coddle such an unconstitutional and futile effort, if she thought it was one particular story that got out this week that drove Trump so over the edge.

“I think he has had an epically bad couple of weeks when you consider the Iran war SCOTUS pushing back on voting, on [failing to put his name on] the Kennedy center and the courts pushing back on that, with interest rates went up. I mean, I could go on and on,” said Grisham. “You all know what's going on. So, I think he just saw the last — whatever the last story he saw was the last straw. And he decided to, you know, post something on social media. It's how he is. He doesn't really think before he does. He just does these things and he just expects everybody around him to just make it work.”

“I imagine he’s going to double down … it’s going to go into litigation,” she concluded.

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