Stephanie Grisham.Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
While he’s since expressed solidarity and support for the mob of rioters whostormed the U.S. Capitolon his behalf in January 2021,Donald Trumpwas allegedly concerned with the optics of how his own supporters looked while the riot was ongoing.
That’s according to a newly released interview from the House committee investigating theJan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, who spoke with former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham onMay 18.
“I don’t know if he expected them to be wearing full suits of like Roman armor and that would have made them not trashy,” she added, “But he did feel they looked trashy, but he loved how they were fighting for him.”
She continued: “He was kind of reveling in the fact that these people were fighting for him. But he also didn’t like how they looked.”
Rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Samuel Corum/Getty
Grisham first workedas First Lady Melania Trump’s press secretarybefore taking over as White House press secretary and communications director in July 2019. She resigned that post in April 2020, leaving the West Wing to again work with the first lady after clashing with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, she said in her interview.
Speaking to the committee, Grisham saidMelania Trump"didn’t trust" a lot of her husband’s closest allies, including his own chief of staff, Meadows, as well as the more controversial members of his legal team who made false claims about the 2020 election.
“She didn’t trust Mark Meadows, was what she told me,” Grisham said in her interview. “She was very angry with him about his treatment and the things he was doing to me personally. She was very wary of Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, a lot of the people who were coming up into the residence and talking to the president.”
In the years since the riots, Trump has claimed that those imprisoned as a result of their involvement have been treated “unfairly.”
In a September radio interview, Trump said that if he were to be elected president again, he would “be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons” for those arrested in the riots.
Reutersreports that elsewhere in that same interview, Trump said he is “financially supporting” some of the rioters facing legal consequences due to their involvement, though he did not offer specifics.
“I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago. It’s very much on my mind. It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to them,” he said.
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source: people.com
