Ex-aide says Trump has ‘no morals’, calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’
- Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham endorsed Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
Former president Donald Trump’s one-time White House press secretary told delegates at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday that Trump, when out of the public eye, would mock his supporters and refer to them as “basement dwellers”.
Stephanie Grisham, who said she would be voting for Vice-President Kamala Harris, began her remarks at the United Centre in Chicago by saying, “I wasn’t just a Trump supporter. I was a true believer – one of his closest advisers.”
She likened the Trump family to her own family and recounted spending Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. But then she addressed Trump’s character.
“I saw him when the cameras were off,” Grisham said. “Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters – he calls them ‘basement dwellers.’ On a hospital visit one time, when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that cameras were not watching him. He has no empathy. No morals. And no fidelity to the truth.”
Grisham is among a handful of Republicans appearing at the convention to denounce Trump and endorse Harris.
To applause, Grisham said she was the first senior White House staffer to resign on January 6, 2021, the day Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. “I couldn’t be part of the insanity any longer,” she said.