Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham disavowed her former boss Tuesday evening and voiced support for Kamala Harris for president in remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In her brief speech, Grisham said that she used to be not just a Trump supporter but also a "true believer" who became part of Trump's family and spent major holidays with him.
"I saw him when the cameras were off, behind closed doors. Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers," she said.
Grisham shared a few anecdotes about her experience working with Trump, including a story about a hospital visit he made during the Covid pandemic and she said people were dying in the intensive care unit.
"He was mad that the cameras were not watching him. He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth," she said. "He used to tell me, 'It doesn't matter what you say, Stephanie — say it enough and people will believe you.' But it does matter — what you say matters, and what you don't say matters."
Representatives for Trump's campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Decision 2024
Grisham said that on Jan. 6, 2021, she asked first lady Melania Trump whether they could tweet out that while peaceful protest is the right of every American, "there's no place for lawlessness or violence."
"She replied with one word: 'No,'" she said. "I became the first senior staffer to resign that day. I couldn't be part of the insanity any longer."
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
Grisham said she was criticized when she was press secretary because she never held a White House briefing in that role.
"It's because, unlike my boss, I never wanted to stand at that podium and lie," she said. "Now here I am behind a podium advocating for a Democrat, and that's because I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people, and she has my vote."
Grisham was Trump’s White House communications director and press secretary from July 2019 to April 2020 and went on to be Melania Trump’s press secretary and chief of staff.
In an interview on MSNBC after her remarks, Grisham said that if she can reach any undecided voters, she wants to convey that she understands what it's like to believe in Trump. But she praised Democrats for pushing a message of unity and said that people may not agree on policies but that it's important to "talk to each other like humans again."
She said that the Harris campaign has been "brilliant" at communicating that people's freedoms are being taken away — that it's not just abortion rights, but also access to birth control.
"I really believe, a lot of people — especially Republican women — are going to vote for Kamala but maybe not tell their husbands," said Grisham, who called Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, "short-sighted" and "misogynistic."
Soon after Jan. 6, Grisham distanced herself from Trump world, and she eventually cooperated with the House committee that investigated the insurrection. In October 2021, she said on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that she tried to resign from the White House "a couple of times" but that Melania Trump persuaded her to stay.
“In fact, I had a resignation letter written out with some very specific points in it that I was ready to hand over at any moment,” she said. “Jan. 6, of course, was my breaking point. And I was really proud that I was, well, the first in the administration to resign.”
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
- Election 2024 DNC live updates: Walz to accept VP nomination; Trump and Vance to counterprogram in North Carolina
- Nancy Pelosi responds to protesters who interrupt her live interview with Stephen Colbert
- Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, moved to new prison after being stabbed
