Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Sunday that former President Trump knows his supporters will likely believe “anything” he says, even if he knows it’s false.
CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Grisham whether Trump is “just kind of a crackpot who believes in conspiracy theories and so he thinks what he’s saying is true.” Grisham pushed back on the question and explained that Trump knows when he is giving out false information to his supporters.
“He’s not a crackpot. He’s actually a very smart man. I mean, he was president of the United States. We have to give them a modicum of credit for that,” she said on “CNN Newsroom.”
“But no, he knows he’s lying. He used to tell me when I was press secretary, ‘Go out there and say this.’ And if it was false, he would say, ‘It doesn’t matter, Stephanie. Just say it over and over and over again, people will believe it.’ He knows his base believes in him. He knows he can basically say anything and his base will believe what he’s saying,” she continued.
Grisham served as the White House press secretary from July 2019 to April 2020. She then served as the chief of staff for then-first lady Melania Trump before resigning from her post Jan. 6, 2021, after a violent mob stormed the Capitol.
Since leaving the White House, she has been outspoken about her time serving in the Trump administration. She also said Sunday that Trump will likely face hurdles in the general election if he continues to spew “lies” to his supporters.
“Now, I think this will help propel him into the general, but I think that independents and you know, center-leaning Republicans are not going to be buying this,” Grisham said. “They’re much much smarter than that, and so I think that that he’s gonna get in trouble in the general with this kind of these kinds of lies.”
She also noted that some of Trump’s base find it easier to believe what Trump is saying because they have supported him for so long.
“It was really hard for me to come to terms with who he was, because I really believed in him, his policies and the person I thought he was. So that’s what I think; I think that people just would rather believe these conspiracy theories, rather than admit that they were wrong about this person,” she said.