Joe Summer
Footballguy
Trump says he's "very seriously" looking at ending birthright citizenship
File under: another attempt to distract the masses.
File under: another attempt to distract the masses.
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The Trump Years- Every day something more shocking than the last! (16 Viewers)
- Thread starter gussy
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I'd like to see SNL do a skit with Bill Murray as Trump
Andie McDowell: "You're a god?"
Trump: "I am the God. I am not a god, I am the God."
Andie McDowell: "You're a god?"
Trump: "I am the God. I am not a god, I am the God."
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
msommer
Footballguy
The Commish
Footballguy
There are A LOT that support Israel for this very reason. It's been a blind support too and has contributed significantly to the support of Trump. It's funny you mention this, because we are searching for a new church home (still) here in Florida and I have heard this mentioned from the pulpit several times during our search. Recently though, I'm hearing more that while Israel is the promised land, it can't be forgotten that it's promised to a broken people and they aren't infallible and need to be held to task in obeying God's word like everyone else. First time I heard it I was pretty shocked.Lutherman2112 said:
The Commish
Footballguy
This is how I approach any of my family and/or friends of faith who continue to support Trump. "Is there anything you can point to in his Presidency that you'd see Jesus doing himself?" Pretty much halts the "conversation" in its tracks.Sheriff Bart said:
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
It's very sad. I haven't attended regular services in over 30 years but that's because I get it. When I learned how to add I moved on. I didn't repeat Kindergarten math every week for the rest of my life. Anyhow, be good to people. Help those that can't help themselves. Treat EVERYONE you meet with respect and dignity. That goes for Trump supporters too. I know a few that are really good people and if he were just some guy would never associate with him. I don't get it. Oh well, I might start going to church again if that means anyone but Trump in 2020.
Lutherman2112
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
The new Onion headlines are going to be:
President Trump cancels golf trip for weekend long emergency DC summit on mental health funding.
Donald Trump apologizes for controversial remarks about Jewish Americans.
When asked about the viability of solar power, the President admits he has a lot to learn on the subject: "I can't be an expert on everything so I will have to rely on the scientists to answer this for me".
President Trump quotes Maya Angelou, "Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible."
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
In another chapter that is the vortex of corruption known as the Trump administration, the State Department aided the President's personal attorney in his attempts to wrangle political dirt out of Ukraine.
Giuliani Renews Push for Ukraine to Investigate Trump’s Political Opponents
Giuliani Renews Push for Ukraine to Investigate Trump’s Political Opponents
WASHINGTON — Months after backing out of a trip to Ukraine amid criticism that he was mixing partisan politics with foreign policy, Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, has renewed his push for the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations into political opponents of Mr. Trump.
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Giuliani has spoken on the phone and held an in-person meeting, in Madrid, with a top representative of the new Ukrainian president, encouraging his government to ramp up investigations into two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.
One is whether Ukrainian officials took steps during the 2016 election to damage Mr. Trump’s campaign. The other is whether there was anything improper about the overlap between former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s diplomatic efforts in Ukraine and his son’s role with a gas company there.
Mr. Giuliani said he was acting on his own as a private citizen, with the knowledge and assistance of the State Department. He would not say whether Mr. Trump approved — or is aware of — the effort.
But his outreach is the latest chapter in a remarkable effort by Mr. Giuliani, who conducts private business around the world, to use his status as Mr. Trump’s lawyer to try to influence another country’s affairs to help his client politically.
His previous efforts to pressure the Ukrainians had drawn condemnation from Democrats. And during a trip to Washington last month, Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian contact was urged by an aide to Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader, not to work with Mr. Giuliani on the issues, according to people familiar with the meeting.
The conflicting directives from the two parties in the United States highlight the tricky calculus facing Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who was elected president of Ukraine in April by a wide margin after campaigning on promises to root out corruption and to seek a settlement to the war with Russian-backed separatists that has killed 13,000 Ukrainians.
The situation in Washington poses an early — and potentially significant — test for Mr. Zelensky and his fledgling government. Relations with the United States are pivotal for Ukraine. Its army has been fortified by American military aid, including soldiers deployed as trainers, and Ukrainian officials want that to continue. Mr. Zelensky is also appealing for greater American diplomatic backing in peace talks.
Mr. Zelensky’s handling of the requests to investigate the two politically charged matters is likely to upset either Mr. Trump and his Republican supporters, or top Democrats, including allies of Mr. Biden, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A Ukrainian news site asserted that “if Ukraine supports the current president and sells out Biden, it would become a cause of deep and irreversible processes which later will circle back on Ukraine in a very unpleasant manner.”
Mr. Giuliani’s efforts have inflamed the situation, said several government officials who handle foreign policy in the United States and Ukraine. Speaking anonymously to avoid running afoul of Mr. Trump or his allies, they blamed Mr. Giuliani for complicating efforts to arrange a visit by Mr. Zelensky to the White House, and for creating a perception that such a meeting would be contingent upon the new Ukrainian government demonstrating support for the investigations.
While Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky have spoken on the phone, they have yet to meet in person. Meetings are possible next month, either on the sidelines of the United Nations meeting in New York or when Mr. Trump attends a World War II commemoration in Poland.
But the Ukrainians covet a White House meeting as a symbolic show of support from a president who has often passed up opportunities to aggressively condemn Russia for its aggression.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Giuliani cast his efforts as intended to help Ukraine advance its long fight to root out corruption across its government, including among prosecutors. But he did not totally reject the suggestion that he was complicating relations between the two governments.
The conflicting directives from two political parties in the United States highlights the tricky calculus facing Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s new president.CreditStephanie Lecocq/EPA, via Shutterstock
“I can’t really evaluate that — whether my involvement in it makes it worse or better,” he said. “I can’t see how advocating for an investigation of two alleged crimes puts too much pressure on them, other than to do the right thing.”
He acknowledged that he had “strongly urged” the Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, a close ally of Mr. Zelensky, to “just investigate the darn things.”
A former mayor of New York and federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani conceded that Mr. Zelensky is in a difficult position, but, he said, “When you have a decision like that, you’re going to piss off somebody, so you might as well make the right decision, right?”
He said he came away from his interactions with Mr. Yermak “pretty confident they’re going to investigate it.”
In interviews this month, Mr. Yermak, a lawyer and former television producer who has known Mr. Zelensky for years, said he discussed with Mr. Giuliani both the possible heads of state meeting and the investigations. But he said they did not discuss a link between the two.
“He said he’s very interested in seeing the new Ukrainian government being open and openly investigating all these cases,” said Mr. Yermak.
He said he told Mr. Giuliani and, separately, congressional staff with whom he met last month in Washington that the new government was committed to fairly investigating possible crimes, but all decisions would have to wait until the Ukrainian parliament confirmed a new top prosecutor, no earlier than next month. Mr. Yermak said he did not interpret his conversation with Mr. Hoyer’s staff as a warning to avoid investigating the Biden matter.
Mr. Yermak was dispatched to Washington by Mr. Zelensky last month to build relationships with American officials, discuss possible American sanctions on a Russian oil pipeline and set the stage for a Trump-Zelensky meeting, for which Mr. Yermak said “we are waiting impatiently.”
Mr. Yermak said it was not clear to him whether Mr. Giuliani was representing Mr. Trump in their talks.
Mr. Giuliani said he explicitly stated that he was not.
The White House referred questions about Mr. Giuliani’s role to the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Giuliani said he briefed State Department officials on the back-channel communications. They were arranged with assistance from the State Department, including Kurt D. Volker, the United States envoy to settlement talks in Ukraine’s war with Russia, who met at the White House last month with Mr. Yermak, another Ukrainian official and top Trump administration officials.
Mr. Volker declined to comment on the Giuliani-Yermak talks.
Mr. Yermak said he asked Mr. Volker to arrange the talks, and people familiar with the effort said it was intended at least partly to turn down the temperature around the issue.
Mr. Giuliani was widely criticized after it was reported that he and his associates had been working to advance the investigations with Ukrainian prosecutors who had been appointed under Mr. Zelensky’s predecessors and who had been accused of corruption.
The prosecutors had been pushing investigations into the gas company for which Mr. Biden’s son Hunter worked and the oligarch who owned it. The prosecutors had also been pushing investigations into Ukrainian officials accused of improperly trying to damage Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The criticism of Mr. Giuliani escalated after The New York Times revealed that he planned to travel to Kiev in May to encourage Mr. Zelensky, who had yet to take office at that point, to press ahead with the investigations.
Amid the uproar, Mr. Giuliani, who has done business in Ukraine, canceled the trip, accusing Democrats of misrepresenting his efforts and suggesting that some members of Mr. Zelensky’s team never intended to give him a fair hearing and were in fact trying to lure him into a “set up.”
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Giuliani has spoken on the phone and held an in-person meeting, in Madrid, with a top representative of the new Ukrainian president, encouraging his government to ramp up investigations into two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.
One is whether Ukrainian officials took steps during the 2016 election to damage Mr. Trump’s campaign. The other is whether there was anything improper about the overlap between former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s diplomatic efforts in Ukraine and his son’s role with a gas company there.
Mr. Giuliani said he was acting on his own as a private citizen, with the knowledge and assistance of the State Department. He would not say whether Mr. Trump approved — or is aware of — the effort.
But his outreach is the latest chapter in a remarkable effort by Mr. Giuliani, who conducts private business around the world, to use his status as Mr. Trump’s lawyer to try to influence another country’s affairs to help his client politically.
His previous efforts to pressure the Ukrainians had drawn condemnation from Democrats. And during a trip to Washington last month, Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian contact was urged by an aide to Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader, not to work with Mr. Giuliani on the issues, according to people familiar with the meeting.
The conflicting directives from the two parties in the United States highlight the tricky calculus facing Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who was elected president of Ukraine in April by a wide margin after campaigning on promises to root out corruption and to seek a settlement to the war with Russian-backed separatists that has killed 13,000 Ukrainians.
The situation in Washington poses an early — and potentially significant — test for Mr. Zelensky and his fledgling government. Relations with the United States are pivotal for Ukraine. Its army has been fortified by American military aid, including soldiers deployed as trainers, and Ukrainian officials want that to continue. Mr. Zelensky is also appealing for greater American diplomatic backing in peace talks.
Mr. Zelensky’s handling of the requests to investigate the two politically charged matters is likely to upset either Mr. Trump and his Republican supporters, or top Democrats, including allies of Mr. Biden, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A Ukrainian news site asserted that “if Ukraine supports the current president and sells out Biden, it would become a cause of deep and irreversible processes which later will circle back on Ukraine in a very unpleasant manner.”
Mr. Giuliani’s efforts have inflamed the situation, said several government officials who handle foreign policy in the United States and Ukraine. Speaking anonymously to avoid running afoul of Mr. Trump or his allies, they blamed Mr. Giuliani for complicating efforts to arrange a visit by Mr. Zelensky to the White House, and for creating a perception that such a meeting would be contingent upon the new Ukrainian government demonstrating support for the investigations.
While Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky have spoken on the phone, they have yet to meet in person. Meetings are possible next month, either on the sidelines of the United Nations meeting in New York or when Mr. Trump attends a World War II commemoration in Poland.
But the Ukrainians covet a White House meeting as a symbolic show of support from a president who has often passed up opportunities to aggressively condemn Russia for its aggression.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Giuliani cast his efforts as intended to help Ukraine advance its long fight to root out corruption across its government, including among prosecutors. But he did not totally reject the suggestion that he was complicating relations between the two governments.
The conflicting directives from two political parties in the United States highlights the tricky calculus facing Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s new president.CreditStephanie Lecocq/EPA, via Shutterstock
“I can’t really evaluate that — whether my involvement in it makes it worse or better,” he said. “I can’t see how advocating for an investigation of two alleged crimes puts too much pressure on them, other than to do the right thing.”
He acknowledged that he had “strongly urged” the Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, a close ally of Mr. Zelensky, to “just investigate the darn things.”
A former mayor of New York and federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani conceded that Mr. Zelensky is in a difficult position, but, he said, “When you have a decision like that, you’re going to piss off somebody, so you might as well make the right decision, right?”
He said he came away from his interactions with Mr. Yermak “pretty confident they’re going to investigate it.”
In interviews this month, Mr. Yermak, a lawyer and former television producer who has known Mr. Zelensky for years, said he discussed with Mr. Giuliani both the possible heads of state meeting and the investigations. But he said they did not discuss a link between the two.
“He said he’s very interested in seeing the new Ukrainian government being open and openly investigating all these cases,” said Mr. Yermak.
He said he told Mr. Giuliani and, separately, congressional staff with whom he met last month in Washington that the new government was committed to fairly investigating possible crimes, but all decisions would have to wait until the Ukrainian parliament confirmed a new top prosecutor, no earlier than next month. Mr. Yermak said he did not interpret his conversation with Mr. Hoyer’s staff as a warning to avoid investigating the Biden matter.
Mr. Yermak was dispatched to Washington by Mr. Zelensky last month to build relationships with American officials, discuss possible American sanctions on a Russian oil pipeline and set the stage for a Trump-Zelensky meeting, for which Mr. Yermak said “we are waiting impatiently.”
Mr. Yermak said it was not clear to him whether Mr. Giuliani was representing Mr. Trump in their talks.
Mr. Giuliani said he explicitly stated that he was not.
The White House referred questions about Mr. Giuliani’s role to the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Giuliani said he briefed State Department officials on the back-channel communications. They were arranged with assistance from the State Department, including Kurt D. Volker, the United States envoy to settlement talks in Ukraine’s war with Russia, who met at the White House last month with Mr. Yermak, another Ukrainian official and top Trump administration officials.
Mr. Volker declined to comment on the Giuliani-Yermak talks.
Mr. Yermak said he asked Mr. Volker to arrange the talks, and people familiar with the effort said it was intended at least partly to turn down the temperature around the issue.
Mr. Giuliani was widely criticized after it was reported that he and his associates had been working to advance the investigations with Ukrainian prosecutors who had been appointed under Mr. Zelensky’s predecessors and who had been accused of corruption.
The prosecutors had been pushing investigations into the gas company for which Mr. Biden’s son Hunter worked and the oligarch who owned it. The prosecutors had also been pushing investigations into Ukrainian officials accused of improperly trying to damage Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The criticism of Mr. Giuliani escalated after The New York Times revealed that he planned to travel to Kiev in May to encourage Mr. Zelensky, who had yet to take office at that point, to press ahead with the investigations.
Amid the uproar, Mr. Giuliani, who has done business in Ukraine, canceled the trip, accusing Democrats of misrepresenting his efforts and suggesting that some members of Mr. Zelensky’s team never intended to give him a fair hearing and were in fact trying to lure him into a “set up.”
Last edited by a moderator:
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
In more things to not be surprised about, new press secretary Stephanie Grisham lost a job due to playing games with expense reports, lost another due to plagiarism, and was busted twice for DWI.
WASHINGTON — Stephanie Grisham doled out fast food and tracked lost gear as a press wrangler on President Trump’s 2016 campaign, far from the in-crowd flying on the gold-plated Trump jet. An early and hard-working convert to Mr. Trump’s cause, she told a reporter at one point that she was “riding it until the money runs out,” eager to return home to Arizona.
Instead, Ms. Grisham, 43, rode all the way to Washington with Mr. Trump. And now, after serving in the press office and as Melania Trump’s spokeswoman, she occupies one of the most prestigious roles in American politics, as White House press secretary and communications director for both the president and the first lady.
For a public relations specialist who once churned out news releases on traffic safety, the White House is the loftiest stop in a turbulent career trajectory that has mixed toughness and loyalty to her bosses with professional scrapes, ethical blunders and years spent alternately wooing and pounding the press on behalf of scandal-prone Arizona Republicans.
“I’ve always had a picture of the White House and it would always sit right in front of my desk” in the Arizona Capitol, Ms. Grisham told a local television interviewer from the state shortly after joining the administration. “Whenever I was having a hard day I could look at it and remember what my goal was.”
While Ms. Grisham is still developing her working relationship with the president, she has been less focused on crafting and delivering the White House’s message than on acting as a behind-the-scenes organizer for a president intent on selling and defending himself.
In the nearly two months since Ms. Grisham was named to her current role, she has not held a single on-camera briefing. She has most recently been in the news for suspending a reporter’s White House pass for a month.
In an interview last week with Eric Bolling of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the only interview she has granted since her move to the West Wing, Ms. Grisham said it was up to the president whether to reinstate the daily White House briefing. “He’s so accessible, so right now I think that that’s good enough,” she said.
Ms. Grisham is the latest example of Mr. Trump’s tendency to value loyalty and an embrace of his unorthodox style ahead of other credentials when filling top jobs.
Her career history contains red flags that most administrations might deem troubling. They include losing a private-sector job after being accused of cheating on expense reports, a later job loss over plagiarism charges and two arrests for driving under the influence, the second while working on Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Colleagues say that on the campaign and in the White House, Ms. Grisham has been a coolheaded, encouraging presence. “When we were tired, she’d tell us, ‘Keep going,’” said Hannah Salem, a White House aide. “She was one of our biggest cheerleaders on the road.”
After Mr. Trump took office, Ms. Grisham joined the White House press office, but soon fled its upheaval and infighting for a job as Mrs. Trump’s communications director, becoming a staunch protector of the first lady.
Ms. Grisham, who repeatedly declined to respond to questions for this article, keeps a low public profile in Washington. Twice divorced, she is the mother of two sons, one in his early 20s and one in grade school.
From her bosses, Ms. Grisham “gets a lot of praise for being loyal,” said David Bodney, a media lawyer in Arizona who tangled with Ms. Grisham over reporter access to public records when she worked in state government there.
“But her job is to make information available,” Mr. Bodney said. “She’s now in a unique position to either serve or frustrate the public interest. Unfortunately, her tenure in Arizona does not bode well.”
Ms. Grisham got her start in national politics as a press aide on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. But she had worked for some time before that in public relations, including a job with the AAA auto club in Arizona, which hired her in late 2006 to help with “public relations, traffic safety initiatives and legislative efforts,” according to an announcement in The Tucson Citizen.
Ms. Grisham was gone within about a year. A former AAA employee with direct knowledge of the matter said Ms. Grisham left after accusations that she filed false claims for travel and other expenses. A spokeswoman for AAA Arizona declined to discuss personnel matters.
Ms. Grisham lost a subsequent job after an accusation of plagiarism.
She had gone to work for an advertising agency in Arizona whose clients included a start-up called GarageFly, an online service that helps car owners find auto repair shops. While making a presentation to the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, GarageFly’s founder showed off his website. In an interview, he said he was quickly informed by a furious attendee from AAA that the website included material lifted verbatim from AAA.
GarageFly’s founder said he had not known because the website was created by GarageFly’s ad agency, Mindspace. And the Mindspace employee responsible for placing the AAA material on the GarageFly website turned out to be Ms. Grisham, according to two other people involved in the matter. Ms. Grisham lost her job. The agency’s owner, Brent Shetler, confirmed Ms. Grisham’s employment but declined to discuss the reasons for her departure.
Ms. Grisham declined to address questions about her departures from AAA and Mindspace.
Ms. Grisham shifted toward politics, working from 2008 to mid-2010 as a spokeswoman for the Arizona Charter Schools Association and in 2011 as a spokeswoman for Tom Horne, Arizona’s attorney general.
In 2012, Ms. Grisham took time off to work as a press aide on Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign. There, colleagues praised her organizational skills and sense of humor.
After Mr. Romney’s loss, “I was devastated for about a month,” Ms. Grisham said in the 2017 television interview. She returned to the attorney general’s office, where in 2014, Ms. Grisham fielded national press inquiries about a botched execution by the state. She described the condemned prisoner, who did not die for nearly two hours after being given a lethal injection, as “snoring” and said of the scene, “It was quite peaceful.”
Mr. Horne spent much of his tenure under investigation for alleged campaign finance violations.
When reporters from The Arizona Republic asked for public records related to the case, Ms. Grisham criticized their requests as “overreaching, an invasion of privacy and abusive use of your role in the media.” Mr. Horne lost his re-election bid and was fined in the campaign finance case.
Ms. Grisham next worked as a spokeswoman for the Arizona House’s Republican majority. In 2016 she revoked The Arizona Capitol Times’s press credentials four hours after the newspaper published an article, written by Hank Stephenson, detailing allegations that the House speaker, David Gowan, had traveled at state taxpayers’ expense while campaigning for Congress.
The fight culminated in Mr. Gowan requiring that reporters covering the Legislature submit to a personal and criminal background check. Those with convictions for serious crimes — and oddly, misdemeanor trespass — would be barred from the House floor.
Ms. Grisham billed the edict as a security measure. But Mr. Stephenson was the only Statehouse reporter with a trespassing charge on his record, related to a tavern fracas. Reporters refused to comply, and Mr. Gowan backed down.
Mr. Stephenson said he does not hold anything against Ms. Grisham, who often socialized with reporters in Phoenix, and even starred in a 2015 video made by The Capitol Times that spoofed her role as spin master.
Image
Ms. Grisham intends to remain a behind-the-scenes player, a change from her predecessor as press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
“She’s fun,” Mr. Stephenson said. “She has a reputation as someone who puts out fires. But she starts a number of fires herself.”
In mid-2015 Ms. Grisham began working for Mr. Trump’s campaign.
In December 2015 in Arizona, Ms. Grisham was arrested for driving under the influence. She pleaded guilty and was fined, and in August 2016 the court ordered her into a treatment program. It was a second offense: In 2013 she was arrested for driving under the influence, speeding and driving with an invalid license.
The 2013 charges were reduced in 2014 to reckless driving, according to court records. Ms. Grisham has told The New York Times that she complied with all sanctions and disclosed both episodes to the White House.
Last year, while working in the East Wing, she helped launch “Be Best,” the first lady’s anti-cyberbullying, anti-opioid campaign. When news emerged that a Be Best guide called “Talking With Kids About Being Online” was actually created in 2009 by the Obama administration, Ms. Grisham began a fierce defense against the plagiarism charge.
“I encourage members of the media to attempt to Be Best in their own professions,” she said.
In the West Wing, friends and former co-workers say, Ms. Grisham intends to remain a behind-the-scenes player. But she has shown a willingness to publicly assail those who displease the president.
“People who survive and thrive in Trump world are the people who come to grips with the reality that you’re just going to have to go where Trump wants to go, and echo what the president says,” said Cliff Sims, a former White House aide and friend of Ms. Grisham’s.
On Mr. Trump’s trip to Asia in June, Ms. Grisham earned plaudits from reporters after confronting North Korean guards trying to bar American journalists from Mr. Trump’s meeting with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
During a news conference with Mr. Trump and the South Korean president, the Korean hosts asked Ms. Grisham to select an American reporter to ask a question. “I’m going to let our president choose,” she responded.
Mr. Trump beamed. “She’s learned very well,” he said.
Instead, Ms. Grisham, 43, rode all the way to Washington with Mr. Trump. And now, after serving in the press office and as Melania Trump’s spokeswoman, she occupies one of the most prestigious roles in American politics, as White House press secretary and communications director for both the president and the first lady.
For a public relations specialist who once churned out news releases on traffic safety, the White House is the loftiest stop in a turbulent career trajectory that has mixed toughness and loyalty to her bosses with professional scrapes, ethical blunders and years spent alternately wooing and pounding the press on behalf of scandal-prone Arizona Republicans.
“I’ve always had a picture of the White House and it would always sit right in front of my desk” in the Arizona Capitol, Ms. Grisham told a local television interviewer from the state shortly after joining the administration. “Whenever I was having a hard day I could look at it and remember what my goal was.”
While Ms. Grisham is still developing her working relationship with the president, she has been less focused on crafting and delivering the White House’s message than on acting as a behind-the-scenes organizer for a president intent on selling and defending himself.
In the nearly two months since Ms. Grisham was named to her current role, she has not held a single on-camera briefing. She has most recently been in the news for suspending a reporter’s White House pass for a month.
In an interview last week with Eric Bolling of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the only interview she has granted since her move to the West Wing, Ms. Grisham said it was up to the president whether to reinstate the daily White House briefing. “He’s so accessible, so right now I think that that’s good enough,” she said.
Ms. Grisham is the latest example of Mr. Trump’s tendency to value loyalty and an embrace of his unorthodox style ahead of other credentials when filling top jobs.
Her career history contains red flags that most administrations might deem troubling. They include losing a private-sector job after being accused of cheating on expense reports, a later job loss over plagiarism charges and two arrests for driving under the influence, the second while working on Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Colleagues say that on the campaign and in the White House, Ms. Grisham has been a coolheaded, encouraging presence. “When we were tired, she’d tell us, ‘Keep going,’” said Hannah Salem, a White House aide. “She was one of our biggest cheerleaders on the road.”
After Mr. Trump took office, Ms. Grisham joined the White House press office, but soon fled its upheaval and infighting for a job as Mrs. Trump’s communications director, becoming a staunch protector of the first lady.
Ms. Grisham, who repeatedly declined to respond to questions for this article, keeps a low public profile in Washington. Twice divorced, she is the mother of two sons, one in his early 20s and one in grade school.
From her bosses, Ms. Grisham “gets a lot of praise for being loyal,” said David Bodney, a media lawyer in Arizona who tangled with Ms. Grisham over reporter access to public records when she worked in state government there.
“But her job is to make information available,” Mr. Bodney said. “She’s now in a unique position to either serve or frustrate the public interest. Unfortunately, her tenure in Arizona does not bode well.”
Ms. Grisham got her start in national politics as a press aide on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. But she had worked for some time before that in public relations, including a job with the AAA auto club in Arizona, which hired her in late 2006 to help with “public relations, traffic safety initiatives and legislative efforts,” according to an announcement in The Tucson Citizen.
Ms. Grisham was gone within about a year. A former AAA employee with direct knowledge of the matter said Ms. Grisham left after accusations that she filed false claims for travel and other expenses. A spokeswoman for AAA Arizona declined to discuss personnel matters.
Ms. Grisham lost a subsequent job after an accusation of plagiarism.
She had gone to work for an advertising agency in Arizona whose clients included a start-up called GarageFly, an online service that helps car owners find auto repair shops. While making a presentation to the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, GarageFly’s founder showed off his website. In an interview, he said he was quickly informed by a furious attendee from AAA that the website included material lifted verbatim from AAA.
GarageFly’s founder said he had not known because the website was created by GarageFly’s ad agency, Mindspace. And the Mindspace employee responsible for placing the AAA material on the GarageFly website turned out to be Ms. Grisham, according to two other people involved in the matter. Ms. Grisham lost her job. The agency’s owner, Brent Shetler, confirmed Ms. Grisham’s employment but declined to discuss the reasons for her departure.
Ms. Grisham declined to address questions about her departures from AAA and Mindspace.
Ms. Grisham shifted toward politics, working from 2008 to mid-2010 as a spokeswoman for the Arizona Charter Schools Association and in 2011 as a spokeswoman for Tom Horne, Arizona’s attorney general.
In 2012, Ms. Grisham took time off to work as a press aide on Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign. There, colleagues praised her organizational skills and sense of humor.
After Mr. Romney’s loss, “I was devastated for about a month,” Ms. Grisham said in the 2017 television interview. She returned to the attorney general’s office, where in 2014, Ms. Grisham fielded national press inquiries about a botched execution by the state. She described the condemned prisoner, who did not die for nearly two hours after being given a lethal injection, as “snoring” and said of the scene, “It was quite peaceful.”
Mr. Horne spent much of his tenure under investigation for alleged campaign finance violations.
When reporters from The Arizona Republic asked for public records related to the case, Ms. Grisham criticized their requests as “overreaching, an invasion of privacy and abusive use of your role in the media.” Mr. Horne lost his re-election bid and was fined in the campaign finance case.
Ms. Grisham next worked as a spokeswoman for the Arizona House’s Republican majority. In 2016 she revoked The Arizona Capitol Times’s press credentials four hours after the newspaper published an article, written by Hank Stephenson, detailing allegations that the House speaker, David Gowan, had traveled at state taxpayers’ expense while campaigning for Congress.
The fight culminated in Mr. Gowan requiring that reporters covering the Legislature submit to a personal and criminal background check. Those with convictions for serious crimes — and oddly, misdemeanor trespass — would be barred from the House floor.
Ms. Grisham billed the edict as a security measure. But Mr. Stephenson was the only Statehouse reporter with a trespassing charge on his record, related to a tavern fracas. Reporters refused to comply, and Mr. Gowan backed down.
Mr. Stephenson said he does not hold anything against Ms. Grisham, who often socialized with reporters in Phoenix, and even starred in a 2015 video made by The Capitol Times that spoofed her role as spin master.
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Ms. Grisham intends to remain a behind-the-scenes player, a change from her predecessor as press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
“She’s fun,” Mr. Stephenson said. “She has a reputation as someone who puts out fires. But she starts a number of fires herself.”
In mid-2015 Ms. Grisham began working for Mr. Trump’s campaign.
In December 2015 in Arizona, Ms. Grisham was arrested for driving under the influence. She pleaded guilty and was fined, and in August 2016 the court ordered her into a treatment program. It was a second offense: In 2013 she was arrested for driving under the influence, speeding and driving with an invalid license.
The 2013 charges were reduced in 2014 to reckless driving, according to court records. Ms. Grisham has told The New York Times that she complied with all sanctions and disclosed both episodes to the White House.
Last year, while working in the East Wing, she helped launch “Be Best,” the first lady’s anti-cyberbullying, anti-opioid campaign. When news emerged that a Be Best guide called “Talking With Kids About Being Online” was actually created in 2009 by the Obama administration, Ms. Grisham began a fierce defense against the plagiarism charge.
“I encourage members of the media to attempt to Be Best in their own professions,” she said.
In the West Wing, friends and former co-workers say, Ms. Grisham intends to remain a behind-the-scenes player. But she has shown a willingness to publicly assail those who displease the president.
“People who survive and thrive in Trump world are the people who come to grips with the reality that you’re just going to have to go where Trump wants to go, and echo what the president says,” said Cliff Sims, a former White House aide and friend of Ms. Grisham’s.
On Mr. Trump’s trip to Asia in June, Ms. Grisham earned plaudits from reporters after confronting North Korean guards trying to bar American journalists from Mr. Trump’s meeting with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
During a news conference with Mr. Trump and the South Korean president, the Korean hosts asked Ms. Grisham to select an American reporter to ask a question. “I’m going to let our president choose,” she responded.
Mr. Trump beamed. “She’s learned very well,” he said.
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Marauder
Footballguy
Has Grisham given a single press briefing since being named press secretary? I don't think I've ever heard her voice or could pick her out of a lineup.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
I don't think so, Trump appears to be de facto press secretary and communications director for the White House now.
Mario Kart
Footballguy
King Trump is simply consolidating power to save the tax payer money. You have to think outside of the box to really, truly, understand King Trump.
If and when the”Chosen One” arrives in our lifetimes I suspect he or she;
-will not be boastful but instead will say that they are an unworthy sinner
- will not claim that they don’t want immigrants from %+=#hole countries nor refer to any countries as being so
-will not brag or care about crowd sizes
-will not resort to childish schoolyard name calling
-will bring about change that makes us feel better, proud and honorable rather than disgusted in what we have become under their leadership
I could go on but you all get my drift.
-
-will not be boastful but instead will say that they are an unworthy sinner
- will not claim that they don’t want immigrants from %+=#hole countries nor refer to any countries as being so
-will not brag or care about crowd sizes
-will not resort to childish schoolyard name calling
-will bring about change that makes us feel better, proud and honorable rather than disgusted in what we have become under their leadership
I could go on but you all get my drift.
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Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
Justice Department says it mistakenly emailed link to white nationalist website
Don't call them racists.
Don't call them racists.
krista4
Footballguy
joffer
Footballguy
randall146
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
It wasn't sent to anyone important or relevant, just some immigration court employees.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Alex P Keaton
Footballguy
msommer
Footballguy
gianmarco
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
That’s all so first century. I think she (it will be a “she”)
-will gain converts the new fashioned way, through Instagram and other social media
-will travel the world spreading her word even though she doesn’t have to (see above)
-will be known almost entirely for self-promotion and image, not deeds or accomplishments
-will produce many offspring and own many pets, a new Ark if you will
-will be in the eyes of her followers successful and admirable but shameful and ignorant to detractors
Yes, the Chosen One does walk among us when she deigns, and you should follow her too. I speak, of course, of the true Second Coming, Kim Kardashian West.
timschochet
Footballguy
msommer
Footballguy
The Commish
Footballguy
And it doesn't seem there is another right out there that can't be infringed upon by some degree to keep us from infringing upon the second. It's the quintessential and perfect display of hypocrisy.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
We've done threads on birthright citizenship before. What people generally don't realize is that the US is the weird outlier on this one. Most other countries don't handle citizenship this way, and no European country does. This isn't the sort of thing that I lose sleep over, but I doubt many people would pick the US approach to citizenship if we were starting in from scratch (which of course, we aren't because the 14th amendment makes this a settled issue).
Blasphemy! Confession will be heard at an oxygen bar in the West Hills. Deets to follow.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
I don’t know where in the Politics forum to put this, but David Koch just died.
snitwitch
Footballguy
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
snitwitch
Footballguy
would be interesting to see a discussion of his legacy, of what he will have left behind for humanity.
clearly his thirst for wealth could not save him from death in the end, and i somehow doubt he figured out a way to take anything with him.
timschochet
Footballguy
Obviously a very influential guy. But like all supposedly all powerful elitist movers and shakers, absolutely helpless before populism.
Case In point: in 2016 he and his brother spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking Donald Trump, trying to get anyone but Trump the GOP nomination- millions spent on Jeb Bush, then Marco Rubio, and finally even Ted Cruz- all of it money wasted. He wasn’t able to change a thing.
Case In point: in 2016 he and his brother spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking Donald Trump, trying to get anyone but Trump the GOP nomination- millions spent on Jeb Bush, then Marco Rubio, and finally even Ted Cruz- all of it money wasted. He wasn’t able to change a thing.
snitwitch
Footballguy
The General
Footballguy
"In lieu of flowers, the family of David Koch requests that mourners simply purchase a Republican politician." -some guy on twitterHenry Ford said:
snitwitch
Footballguy
they weren't able to destroy public schools or social security. whether or not they've destroyed the planet is still tbd.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Lessee. King of Israel. The Messiah. Fractures relationship with ally because they wouldn't discuss selling the world's biggest island mass. Orders American companies out of China.
Great week.
Great week.
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SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Right now at the White House, I'd imagine that the main goal of the WH staff and the US executive branch is to get this man to the country club stat.
Mile High
Footballguy
Let's just say all these companies come back, what is the plan to fill all of these new jobs with employees when we are low unemployment numbers? What is the plan for us to be able to afford to buy all of this made in America stuff, because things are going to become alot more expensive.
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