White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham has seen an increased level of overtly hateful messages and sexist threats since the establishment media have intensified criticisms of her in recent weeks, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
“F*ck you,” one person wrote in red ink to Grisham in one such message.
“c*nt,” read a postcard addressed to “Stephanie C*nt Grisham” at the White House.
“You were remembered in prayer,” another note, with the implication that she was going to be killed, sent to Grisham read.
One person sent her a teddy bear covered in what looked like blood. The teddy bear never made it to her, as the Secret Service intercepted it before it was delivered to her—and all she got was a photo of the maimed teddy bear.
The White House provided Breitbart News with these and other samples of hate-filled vitriolic messages Grisham has been receiving—most sent to the White House address, but some she has been receiving at her home address—in recent weeks and months.
They have intensified as CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times have published a steady stream of attacks against her, whining that she has not done an on-camera briefing since taking the job. All three outlets have engaged in a series of hits ripping her, and as they have done so, the threats against her have increased.
Breitbart News is publishing images of the threats here, and redacting personally identifying information that could reveal who sent them to the White House or Grisham’s personal address. They include postcards, letters, social media messages, and even the apparently bloodied teddy bear. These images are graphic in nature, filled with vile and disgusting language, and are just a small sample of the broader attacks Grisham has endured since taking the job as President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary.
Grisham, one of Trump’s top aides who has been at the president’s side since early in the 2016 presidential campaign, told Breitbart News for this story that she understands part of the job is dealing with unprecedented opposition, but the media hatred directed at her is making it worse.
Several top allies of the president, including a number of women who work throughout the administration and on the president’s re-election campaign, as well as other outside allies of the White House, defended Grisham from this hateful vitriol in exclusive statements to Breitbart News on Thursday evening as well.
Someone wrote in a handwritten postcard to Grisham with a postmark in Texas:
I am tired of lies. I am tried of racism. I am tired of the swamp. I am tired of ‘alternative facts.’ I am tired of cover for the Drumpf. I am tired of bully tactics. I am tired of rapists. I despise dictators. I wonder will you kiss the ring? the ass? The Putin-lover, the dictator-lover? You have already, I know. Are you going to kick out journalists? Are you a Sarah Sanders wannabe? Will you always praise the racist in chief? Are you a racist? I know… you don’t care either, do you? Watch your pussy.
Another postcard with a return address sticker with a woman’s name and an address in Michigan printed on it, addressed to Grisham, said:
AKA Braindead Lying Twit Pretending to be a Press Secretary a la Fox News” in “America’s House of Treason” with the White House address, called her a “treacherous b*tch,” referred to Grisham’s predecessor Sarah Huckabee Sanders as “F*ck-a-Me,” and said anyone who works in President Trump’s White House has their “brains melt into puddles of turds.”
Another message addressed to Grisham said it is a “pity you choose a corrupt misogynist and racist over your country.”
“And you’re not even doing your job,” the message continued. “A true parasite.”
That one ends with a not-too-subtle threat: “Praying that Satan takes you home soon.”
Three other postcards sent via Touchnote–a service by which people can send postcards via an online service–include one calling her a “despicable piece of sh*t;” another that addresses her as “you f*cking c*nt” and says “people paid with taxpayer dollars to defend a criminal president deserve strong language like that;” and a third postcard says, “Here’s some strong language you deserve. How can you stand yourself you filthy piece of shit.”
Others include postcard photograph memes that call her a “c*nt,” a “bloody c*nt,” and urge her to “shut the fuck up u bloody c*nt.”
That’s not to mention all the hate she’s received via social media platforms, including a message that asks her “exactly what mental disorders” she was born with, saying she is a “highly f*cking ignorant moronic c*nt” whose “mother certainly would have done the world a favor if she had had an abortion” and hopes that Grisham’s “tubes are tied.”
Another asks her if President Trump had to “grab your p*ssy” in order for her to get the White House press secretary job, calling her a “silly c*nt” and threatening to make a “meme of you giving him a blowjob.”
“I hope your kids see it,” the hate messenger added.
Another person called Grisham a “f*cken c*nt,” “pure human trash,” and said “your family for generations will be embarrassed because of you.”
There are several more messages, including multiple vitriolic letters like one where the author—the letter is signed by someone who identifies themself as a man from south Florida—writes to Grisham that the letter author is “sure the president is pleased to have replaced the previous lying whore with one who is equally unqualified—except perhaps in the area of giving blow jobs to the head man, so to speak.”
“You are sucking on the part of him that has the most brains,” the author continued in the letter to Grisham. “Comparable in size to yours which apparently resides in your pussy. You people are a bunch of fascist pigs.”
All of these hate-filled and vulgar messages and attacks come as the establishment media—from CNN’s Anderson Cooper, among many other CNN staffers, to the Washington Post’s media blogger Erik Wemple, to the New York Times’ media reporter Michael Grynbaum and others at the Times, among many others—continue to attack Grisham for not holding any press briefings like her predecessors Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Sean Spicer did.
It all started with a CNN piece in August 2019, a month into Grisham’s tenure in the job. Then CNN doubled down in November. That led to the New York Times hit in early January, which sparked more CNN attacks from Cooper and then eventually a regularly-updated ongoing “Grisham Watch” blog from Wemple in the Washington Post.
In August 2019, CNN staffers Kate Bennett and Kaitlan Collins published a piece on the organization’s website titled: “The White House has a new press secretary, remember?”
The piece from the CNN staffers noted that some had hoped Grisham would reinstate press briefings on camera, which ended towards the end of Sanders’ tenure, but that Grisham was leaning against doing so.
The CNN staffers wrote in the article, which quoted Grisham on the record as explaining the many things she did for the press in lieu of an on-camera briefing that people like CNN staffer Jim Acosta use to try to cause confrontation to drive television ratings:
Once a standard weekday ritual, it has now been 165 days [40 of which were Grisham’s at the time of the publication of this Aug. 2019 CNN article] since the last official White House press briefing, and Grisham has shown no sign of returning to the podium. She chalks it up to just one of many examples of how the Trump presidency has broken any semblance of normalcy.
She cites the number of times she has met with the White House Correspondents’ Association leadership (four), how many unscheduled daily press visits to her office she gets (35 or so, but some aren’t received, she said), the ramped up number of official White House press releases that have come from her office since the first week of July (225) and that she has gaggled, once, aboard Air Force One. All of the activities listed fall under the realm of typical responsibilities of a White House press secretary.
Then, later, CNN writer Oliver Darcy—who writes about media for the network—on Nov. 11, 2019, really kicked things into high gear.
“White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has yet to hold a briefing with reporters, but finds time for Fox News,” was Darcy’s Nov. 11 headline.
In the piece, Darcy counted up the number of times Grisham had appeared on various conservative media platforms—and contrasted that with not holding a briefing. Buried in the story is a quote from Grisham, who cooperated with his story and noted that it was the president’s decision to cancel the briefings. She told to Darcy she will “hold a press briefing when the President wants me to.”
“That is ultimately his decision,” Grisham said to Darcy. “The briefings, which are meant to inform the public, were becoming a spectacle.”
Those attacks in 2019 laid the groundwork for an intensification of media attacks in early 2020. When the new year hit, on Jan. 10, the New York Times’ Grynbaum and Katie Rogers published a co-bylined attack on Grisham headlined: “Stephanie Grisham: Trump’s Press Secretary Who Doesn’t Meet the Press.”
The sub-headline suggested that Grisham was abandoning the country at a time when the nation was on the brink of war with Iran—a war that never materialized.
“A presidency in crisis, a nation on the brink of war — and a White House press secretary who was largely out of sight,” the sub-heading read.
The narrative in Grynbaum’s and Rogers’ piece was similar to that started by CNN in 2019.
they wrote in the Times:
It’s not every day that the White House press secretary is offered $200,000 to appear on camera and explain the president’s decisions — any of them — to the public. But as one of the most consequential weeks in President Trump’s tenure draws to a close, the world beyond the Beltway is beginning to notice that Stephanie Grisham — unlike her predecessors, colleagues and boss — does not appear to relish the talking-to-the-public part of her job. In six months as press secretary, Ms. Grisham has held zero briefings for reporters.
That Times piece paved the way for bigger guns at CNN to join their lower-level colleagues from the 2019 stories, where anchor Anderson Cooper started going after Grisham in several broadcasts.
In Cooper’s “The Ridiculist” segment that evening, Jan. 10, he ripped Grisham for not holding on-camera televised press briefings.
“Grisham is making more than $150,000 a year, she doesn’t have time to step into that small, dank little room with all that free press sitting around. There’s no telling what they might ask,” Cooper said.
Cooper then launched into a conspiracy-laden tirade claiming Grisham was actually “trying to secretly and subtly subvert the president” as a “deep-cover asset for the resistance inside the White House.”
CNN, and Cooper, continued the attacks in subsequent days.
After that, the Washington Post’s media blogger started publishing a series he called “The Grisham Watch” where he tracked Grisham’s daily movements—including her trips to the bathroom.
Several Trump supporters were outraged that Wemple would publish such things:
But Wemple has continued the attacks and published a number of stories asking Grisham for her daily movements and activities around the White House, with which she has cooperated, providing him a detailed account of her activities on some days including trips to the restroom.
But as these media attacks intensify, so has the hate-filled, vitriolic, and potentially dangerous messages and packages from critics of the Trump administration.
Grisham, for her part, is taking it in stride but criticized the establishment media in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News for refusing to hold themselves accountable and refusing to hold themselves to the same standards they project onto others.
“Being the President’s spokesperson makes me a public figure, and that comes with a lot of attention–often negative,” Grisham told Breitbart News. “That’s always been a part of the job, especially for Republicans. But the media’s coverage of this President and his staff has escalated the negativity to unprecedented levels, as evidenced by my predecessor being the first press secretary to have a Secret Service detail. The media say they are here to ‘hold the powerful accountable,’ which is a noble goal. But who holds the media accountable? They circle the wagons to protect each other–even though their ‘mistakes’ always go in one direction–but pile on the people who don’t share their views. There are consequences for this, especially for those of us who find ourselves in their crosshairs.”
The first family is appreciative of Grisham’s work in the job and what she has to go through to serve the country and the president.
Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s eldest son, told Breitbart News for this story that the attacks on Grisham are totally uncalled for—and he thinks rational Americans should speak up in her defense.
“The media are so consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome that they’ll do anything to advance their ideology and agenda, even if that means putting their political opponents’ lives in danger,” Trump, Jr., said. “The media called me a traitor for two solid years, then when the Russia hoax was exposed, they just moved on to the next hit job. But their hysteria contributed to me becoming the second most threatened individual in the country, according to the Secret Service. Stephanie’s tough as nails. But she deserves the vocal support of every rational American who’s sick of the media’s irresponsible attacks.”
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer also defended Grisham. “Attacks and threats of violence have no place in our country,” Spicer told Breitbart News.
Several top women inside the Trump administration and who work for the president’s re-election campaign have also gone on record to defend Grisham from these horrific attacks.
“The White House Press Secretary should never be threatened for simply carrying out her job,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told Breitbart News. “Stephanie is a public servant, a patriot, and an exemplary role model for aspiring female communicators. And she’s my friend. We’d be lucky to have more women like her in this administration.”
Pentagon Press Secretary Alyssa Farah similarly stood up for Grisham.
“Stephanie works tirelessly every day to advance the Trump Administration’s agenda and communicate the President’s priorities to the American people,” Farah told Breitbart News. “She’s highly professional, loyal, and an invaluable member of the Administration.”
Several women leaders on Trump’s re-election campaign also defended Grisham. Trump’s newly named national finance chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee Kimberly Guilfoyle was one.
“Never before in American history have women been more empowered than right now under President Trump, and the left hates it,” Guilfoyle said. “Now their allies in the media are committed to smearing the strong women who are working to advance his agenda. Stephanie Grisham is truly a patriot who is as skilled as she is brilliant. As a woman, I am proud of the work she continues to do on behalf of this great county.”
Senior adviser to the president’s 2020 re-election campaign Katrina Pierson added that this is why people, including the president, think the media are “the enemy of the people.”
“Honestly this is why the fake news media is the enemy of the people,” Pierson said. “The character assassination of the president and those around him by the fake news media is what contributes to the hostility and the danger that follows when being demonized by a once-credible media establishment. The attacks from the fake news media have real world consequences, and here you see an example of those. There are at least 63 million Trump supporters who have families who are real people with real emotions and real lives. Many of them go through this on a regular basis and it’s unacceptable. There’s an old saying that if you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target so my friend Stephanie appears to be very effective. She’s tough and a fighter. They won’t make her back down.”
Jenna Ellis, an attorney for President Trump, added that no public servant should have to go through what Grisham has endured here.
“No public servant should EVER have to endure disgusting personal threats on their safety,” Ellis told Breitbart News. “Our country was built upon the idea of peaceful assembly and public discourse. But the radical left won’t tolerate anyone they disagree with, and they absolutely hate President Trump for his bold championing of conservative American values. The media is only amplifying the hatred and viciously vilifying anyone associated with President Trump hoping to bully us to back down and stop fighting for liberty. I have two words for you: WE WON’T.”
Arthur Schwartz, a GOP strategist outside the White House who is a close ally of the president and first family, added that this behavior further exposes the establishment media.
“The President’s election exposed the media for being completely out of touch with the America that they are supposedly covering,” Schwartz said. “It was a total embarrassment and they’ve been lashing out ever since–hoaxes, conspiracy theories, angry attacks. It’s really been something to watch the media destroy the little bit of credibility they had left. But the unfortunate side effect of this reckoning is that their attacks hurt the people they target and sometimes even put them in physical danger. It’s irresponsible, at best, and sometimes flat out malicious. In Stephanie’s case, they could care less that she’s a working mom whose risen to her position by sheer tenacity. If she were a Democrat she’d be a media darling. But since she works for Trump they want to tear her down.”
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