Free, Melania

by Kate Bennett

  15

  The East Wing, the White House’s Tightest Ship

  “We are all very, very loyal to her.”

  —STEPHANIE GRISHAM

  Stephanie Grisham came into Trump world early. She worked in GOP politics in her home state of Arizona for years, and for a time jumped onto Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012. But when she offered to help the nascent Donald Trump campaign with a speech he did in Phoenix, wrangling press and acting as a conduit between Trump staff and local media, Grisham caught the Trump bug. She decided that day: I’m going to work for him.

  By mid-2015 she was onboard officially, working with the media as Trump traversed the country, building momentum, picking off his fellow Republican contenders until he was the only one, and, ultimately, beating Hillary Clinton to become president. Grisham in the meantime earned her stripes with the Trump campaign press-embed reporters. She was well liked and tenacious. There’s a story told about her that on one late night when there was a hiccup with the press plane, Grisham served the media warm chocolate chip cookies and milk. It’s true.

  Grisham was rewarded with a role in the White House, getting the title of deputy press secretary, working under Sean Spicer, who was then the press secretary, though not for long (he lasted just six months). But in February 2017, barely into her West Wing tenure, Grisham caught the eye of the first lady. Melania had gotten some heat for not being there to greet the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, and his wife, Akie Abe, when they arrived in Washington, D.C., for a visit with Trump at the White House. Typically, a first lady is around to entertain a visiting spouse accompanying her husband on an official visit. It’s not a rule per se, but it’s definitely recommended protocol. Melania was MIA for Mrs. Abe, who toured Washington by herself. (It should be noted that Melania has since gotten quite good at being present for leader visits, and she’s adept at hosting other spouses for tea or lunch in the Red, Blue, or Green Room while the heads of state hold meetings in the Oval Office.) Melania did meet the Abes at Andrews Air Force Base for the ride on Air Force One down to Mar-a-Lago, where the Japanese leader would stay for the weekend at Trump’s invitation, but the story of the first lady of the United States missing the first opportunity to host a fellow first lady was already out there—mostly because I reported it. I will add here that the blowback to my pointing out Melania’s faux pas triggered the only call I have ever gotten from Air Force One, which is kind of scary and enthralling at the same time. I was chewed out by Katie Walsh, Spicer and Reince Priebus’s top comms deputy, who tried to spin me that it was fine and that Melania was with Mrs. Abe on the plane and would remain with her for the duration of the weekend, and so I should correct the language of my previous piece. I did not.

  It was Grisham who stepped in on the ground to help Melania with Mrs. Abe for that weekend in Palm Beach. As usual, Trump’s team had overlooked the first lady’s needs in terms of communications, press releases, and official statements on the visit, so Grisham gathered a press pool for the ladies’ visit to a local Japanese garden. Grisham hopped in and Melania was grateful for it. One month later, she tapped her as East Wing communications director, and Grisham happily left the discombobulated West Wing chaos of Spicer and Steve Bannon and Priebus and Ivanka and Jared et al. and moved down the long hallway into a spacious office on the second floor of the East Wing, right next door to the office of her new boss. In her office to this day hangs a framed clip about Grisham’s hire in The Washington Post, autographed in big black marker by the president, saying how proud he is of her.

  Grisham is literally Melania’s first line of defense. She’s her guard dog, her mouthpiece, and, at times, her confidante. The two communicate throughout the day, sometimes in person, often on the phone, and frequently by text, which Melania does oftentimes with emoji—conveying her happiness, disappointment, or surprise.

  Grisham has always been emphatic about how real and “down to earth” Melania actually is, once telling me, “You meet her, and she’s the one saying, ‘Can I get you a Coke? Do you want a coffee? Are you comfortable? Is it warm enough?’” It’s a side that Grisham and I often go ten rounds about because Grisham rarely lets the public see it. There’s a tendency for Grisham to want it both ways about her boss. She’ll complain that we (CNN/media at large) don’t tell the real story about who Melania is and only focus on the more salacious headlines (not true, by the way), but then Grisham guards the first lady and her privacy like a bulldog, which, let’s face it, makes it a challenge to showcase who she “really” is. Grisham also says Melania is very funny, and one of their favorite pastimes is to “laugh” at the rumors and false stories about the first lady. I find that puzzling, but I think it’s also an indication, again, of just how little Melania cares what people think and how little effort she and Grisham put into correcting the record. “I’ve learned from her that we don’t have to tell everybody everything. We just don’t. And it works out fine,” Grisham told me.

  While the slings and arrows fly in the West Wing, with massive numbers of staff departures and feuding factions, the East Wing is indeed quite drama-free. Melania’s chief of staff, Reynolds, who worked in the George W. Bush administration in the White House Visitors Office and therefore had some experience in the White House, is so quiet and unassuming that when I first saw her, carrying Melania’s Birkin bag and toting a long coat over her arm, I assumed she was one of her personal assistants, but then I learned that (a) Melania doesn’t have personal assistants and (b) holy shit, that woman is her chief of staff. Reynolds is from Ohio, where she was once a schoolteacher and also at one point ran an upscale events company with two friends. She is simple in her look: minimal makeup, bland but very chic style, a tight strawberry blond bob often tucked behind her ears. A mother of three young children, she spends most weekends, with Melania’s blessing, back home with them and her husband in Ohio. But she is the one in the East Wing to convey Melania’s schedule to her, explain her options for trips and events, inform her of the people who have reached out, address her correspondence requests, and take care of her day-to-day responsibilities. To give you an indication of just how quiet Reynolds is (ghostlike is not a stretch), I have been on the FLOTUS beat for almost three years now, and, besides a nod of hello here and there, I have never had a full conversation with her, despite my requests for an interview.

  Also on the East Wing team is Melania’s social secretary, Rickie Lloyd. Melania’s hiring of Rickie was textbook Melania. Though she had been given numerous suggestions for whom to tap as her social secretary, a crucially important job in any White House since the social secretary oversees every event, from a two-person luncheon with the president in the Oval Office to the Easter Egg Roll for thousands to a state dinner, Melania didn’t want to listen to the advice of people she didn’t know—especially Washington people, whom she really didn’t know. The job is also essential in that the person holding it (and there has been a White House social secretary since 1901, when Theodore Roosevelt created the role) must oversee and work in tandem with the massive White House residence staff.

  So, instead of taking anyone’s word for whom she should pick, as she and Trump dined inside the Capitol building on Inauguration Day at the traditional luncheon with Congress, just minutes after her husband had taken the oath of office, Melania took note of how smoothly things were flowing for this meal of tradition and importance, with hundreds of the most VIP of VIP guests. The courses were tasty and served in a timely manner, the dishware was flawless, the flowers impeccable, and the details, from linens to place cards, were very much to her liking. That was all Rickie, who at the time was an executive with Design Cuisine, a posh Washington catering company that handles all the “best” events and dinner parties. If you were on the social circuit in D.C., you knew Rickie. After several interviews—one of which was held in New York City in Melania’s home office at Trump Tower—Rickie was hired. It also didn’t hurt that Rickie was married to Thomas Lloyd, a grandson of Bunny Mellon, the wealthy Am
erican benefactor whose friendship and influence with Jackie Kennedy resulted in the creation and design of the White House Rose Garden.

  A prim and proper middle-aged beauty whose hemlines never rise above her knee and whose brown hair is often pulled back under a headband, an Hermès scarf around her neck, Rickie can often be spotted in the background of most events, never stepping into the spotlight occupied by her boss and always creating the environment requested by Melania. For Halloween, Melania said she wanted “spooky,” and Rickie made it so. For her first state dinner (for France) as first lady, Melania wanted white and gold and tasteful, and Rickie did just that, using cream linens and ivory floral arrangements, gilded china, and tall white-tapered candles.

  The three women, Grisham, Reynolds, and Niceta, are essentially the core of Melania’s staff; the other five or so members fan out from there. Grisham, for instance, has a communications assistant, Annie LeHardy, a young woman she hired from the West Wing’s press office, who travels with the press and oversees all the crucial media movements when Melania has events. Annie has taken on more responsibility since Grisham became Trump’s press secretary and White House communications director in July 2019. She’s still (also) Melania’s chief spokeswoman. It’s a lot.

  The new role was offered to Grisham at Melania’s urging. She was keenly aware that her husband needed someone like Grisham—or, it turns out, Grisham herself—to combat his negative press and to defend him. Trump knew Grisham was loyal; with the exception of his social media director, Dan Scavino, no one in the West Wing had been there as long as she had. Also, Grisham had been in the room many times with Trump and Melania, she had witnessed their interactions, their movements, their conversations, and nothing escaped her—she was like a vault. Trump could not say the same about so many other members of his staff, whose leaks from the West Wing were so frequent and plentiful it made the place look more like a sieve than a tightly functioning office, the most powerful one in the land. Trump hated that. He liked Grisham, and he knew that if Melania recommended that he hire her, he should hire her. In their marriage, what Melania wanted, Melania often got.

  For her part, Grisham has wanted to be White House press secretary since as long as she knew what the job was, at least for the bulk of her two-decades-long career. Many young people know they want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, a ballerina—Grisham wanted to be a press sec.

  It should be noted that Trump boasts about his business acumen, but so far he has not been able to build a properly functioning West Wing communications shop, or a soup-to-nuts staff. People come and go, leaks abound, nominees are scuttled after embarrassing information turns up in their background checks. Melania, on the other hand, who is known for being arm candy, is the one who has built a highly successful East Wing. Her appointees have not only stayed, they’ve stayed loyal, which is quite a feat in a shark tank like Washington, D.C.

  16

  The Marriage

  “It’s not always pleasant, of course, but I know what is right and what is wrong and what is true and not true.”

  —MELANIA TRUMP

  It is tradition, as are most things inside the White House, that the president of the United States rides in the same vehicle as the first lady of the United States on the evening he delivers what is arguably one of the most important speeches in politics. It’s not necessarily written in stone, but it is how it has always been. But less than an hour before President Trump was set to depart the White House for the two-and-a-half-mile trip to the U.S. Capitol Building to deliver his very first State of the Union address to Congress, the staff got word: she’s not riding with him.

  That night, as the message made its way from Melania down through her staff to his staff to the Secret Service, residence staff, and on, no one said a word. Too nervous to chatter on about the lord and lady of the house’s marital tension, the silence as the White House prepped for Melania’s solo departure was deafening. It fell to Reynolds, Melania’s chief of staff, to share the news with Trump’s chief of staff at the time, John Kelly. Everything about this was uncomfortable, but no one had the nerve to speak up or ask questions—it was what Melania wanted, and therefore it would be done.

  Normally, when the first couple arrives at the Capitol, together, the first lady veers into an anteroom to wait until the speech is about to begin before taking her seat with guests in the gallery. The president glad-hands on arrival, chatting with congressmen and senators, the vice president, the speaker of the House. He does the “work” of laying out his thoughts and plans for the country he oversees; the first lady is there, as she often is, in a supporting role, to back up his words, supply the human side (again, as expected), and generally look pretty, smile, and wave.

  Not exactly heavy lifting for Melania. The only problem was, on January 30, 2018, the night the State of the Union was to be delivered, she didn’t much feel like supporting her husband.

  The Trumps hadn’t been seen together in public since December 31. On January 12, The Wall Street Journal broke the story that a porn star named Stormy Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) had been paid $130,000 in October 2016 by Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, to sign a contract pledging to keep her mouth shut about an affair she alleges that she had with Donald Trump in July 2006, which would have been eighteen months after he and Melania got married and four months after Melania gave birth to Barron. It was a bombshell of a scoop, with all sorts of complex legal implications for the president, but it was a gut punch to the first lady.

  It was the biggest speech of Trump’s tenure so far, his first State of the Union, but CNN’s coverage led with my breaking news that Melania had driven separately from her husband, with video of her motorcade speeding up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. Several minutes later, there was live video of the president, getting into the Beast, alone. It was a stark portrait of the lonely, chastened, most powerful man in the world. With one swift last-minute decision, Melania had delivered a punishing blow to the potency of the president on one of his most important nights.

  Her spokeswoman, Grisham, told me that the reason Melania went separately to the Capitol was so she could spend more “quality time” with the fifteen special guests she had invited to attend the speech in her box in the gallery.

  Another part of the evening’s tradition is that first ladies host guests in their box who are typically referred to during the president’s speech. That night, Melania was hosting a marine who had been injured in battle, a family who had lost a family member to an MS-13 gang member, one of the founders of the rescue group the Cajun Navy, and a New Mexico police officer who, with his wife, adopted a baby from parents who were addicted to opioids.

  Grisham’s reasoning was fair, but it’s also fair to point out the fact Melania had already broken with tradition once that evening by hosting a private reception for all the guests at the White House on her own—another independent move that had nothing to do with Trump’s separate meet and greets for guests in the Oval Office, which Melania did not attend. However, according to Grisham, the first lady felt the need to host a separate event, one that offered more “personal” exposure to the honorees of the evening. It was odd, and an excessive flex of her doing something by herself, no question—especially since, once she and the guests arrived at the Capitol, they had another private reception (the third!), this time with Melania and Karen Pence in an anteroom near the Capitol gallery. That evening, the special guests of the president and first lady were more like children of divorced parents, shuttled between two events marking the same achievement, only one was with Mom and one with Dad.

  Melania had steeled herself against all sorts of stories of infidelity involving her husband through the almost two decades they had been together and had weathered them in the way she best knew: she ignored them, publicly at least. She knew well the man she married: that he was no arbiter of moral fortitude, that he had a shoddy track record with fidelity. But the past few weeks that Melania had en
dured were so publicly scathing and deeply humiliating that she was angry with him more because of what he had exposed to the world than because of what he was alleged to have done with Daniels.

  One source who knows Melania well said to me, “She’s not locked herself in a golden bedroom somewhere to cry her eyes out that he was possibly unfaithful, if that’s what anyone might be thinking.”

  “To be with a man as my husband is, you need to know who you are,” Melania has said. “You need to have a very independent life as well, and supporting him.” But that night, she didn’t really feel all that much like supporting him. In fact, the two hadn’t been spotted together publicly for a month; they were last seen walking into the annual New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago, Melania wearing a sparkly pink sequin dress, with an expression that was neither sparkly nor festive.

  There was nothing pink or feminine about her look at the State of the Union. When she was announced entering the gallery, she stood atop the stairs, giving her open-close hand wave, wearing a bright white Christian Dior pantsuit with matching white button-down shirt. It smacked of suffragette symbolism and, yes, possibly resistance, maybe even a nod to Hillary Clinton’s favored ubiquitous menswear. Whatever she was trying to say with that suit, and she was trying to say something, it had a message, and the message had nothing to do with supporting Trump.

  The white suit was just one small act of defiance, perhaps, but is something to analyze in the greater orbit of Melania moments, especially those moments in the first months of 2018, when story after salacious story about her husband’s alleged affairs filled the headlines.