Opinion: Stephanie Grisham: I told the Trumps my relationship with a White House staffer had turned abusive. They didn’t seem to care.
He and the first lady invited us as a couple to events, with Trump conferring on us his stock compliment, “right out of central casting.” They knew when we got a dog for my birthday. They knew when we broke up.
They also knew when the relationship turned abusive — and they didn’t seem to care.
One day, while meeting with Mrs. Trump alone, she asked how I was holding up after our breakup. My eyes started to well up. I had been holding in the fact that the end of our relationship had become violent, reaching its worst point on the day I left. I told the first lady that he got physical with me.
She asked me if I had called the police and I said no, explaining that this close to the election, it wouldn’t be good to have yet another domestic abuse scandal hanging over the administration. I also had no proof. She nodded and did not push the matter further. As far as I know, she told no one.
A few weeks later, after the first presidential debate, I was with President Trump on Air Force One. Noting that my ex was also in our entourage, the president asked me if it was tough to have seen him at the debate. He then began to tell me how broken up my ex had been about the split and expressed sympathy for him.
I couldn’t sit there and listen to that. Although I had not intended to, I confided the same story about the physical abuse that I had told Mrs. Trump. I told the president that this “great guy” had anger issues and a violent streak. I was not some stranger making a wild accusation. I hoped that he would take me seriously, that he would do something.
After I finished, the president crossed his arms and just said, “That surprises me. He was really broken up over things.” After we got off the helicopter, Mrs. Trump said she was glad I told him.
We never spoke about it again.
I felt that Mrs. Trump believed my story. I suspected the president, long invested in the view that women usually make up allegations of assault, didn’t want to believe it.
Whether they believed me or not, however, isn’t really the point. My ex has denied my allegations and engaging in any such behavior, but his denials aren’t really the point either.
The point is that the president and first lady seemed totally unfazed about whether there was an abuser — another abuser — in their workplace. There was no follow-up from either of them to see if I needed help or protection. There was no investigation ordered. No effort to get to the bottom of this.
A White House staffer accused of assault by a woman whom the president knew and trusted? It didn’t even seem to register on the president’s radar screen as a concern. To the contrary, knowing what he knows, Trump has endorsed my ex’s bid for Congress. The takeaway: Dealing with abuse claims is not in his interest, but having someone in office who will be a rubber stamp for his agenda is.
I was violently awakened to the Trumps when the Capitol came under attack on Jan. 6 — an attack the president encouraged and the first lady casually ignored at the time. Their “base” was, and remains, only a means to an end, just like I was. For me, the spell had been broken. In my mind, they wouldn’t care what fate befell anyone involved in the violence at the Capitol. I was the first senior official to resign that day. And I have never regretted the long-delayed choice to break free.
I was immediately ostracized from the majority of Trumpworld. I still haven’t spoken to many of the people I worked alongside for years. The usual rumors are being spread that I was a leaker, a liar, mentally unstable and things too painful for me to even recount.
There will be an effort to destroy me — I know because I did the same thing to others who saw the Trumps up close and came forward with books or interviews or op-eds to tell the truth.
It’s poetic justice, I guess, that I was once a destroyer myself.
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