Hope Hicks bashed for taking 'the easy way out' of White House chaos in Stephanie Grisham's new book

Donald Trump's former press secretary expressed resentment toward the ex-president's favored aide Hope Hicks in her new tell-all book about her time in the White House.

Stephanie Grisham criticized Hicks, a former Trump Organization employee who served through the 2016 campaign and for the first year of the administration, for leaving the White House for a job at Fox Corp. until returning in March 2020 -- just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning, according to excerpts from "I'll Take Your Questions Now" published by Politico.

"Hope had left the White House about two years earlier," Grisham wrote. "I think she had been understandably stressed out by the communications director job and didn't like the fact that she had been subpoenaed and had had to testify in the Robert Mueller investigation (during which she admitted to congressional investigators that she had, in her words, told some tiny 'white lies' on behalf of the president)."

"She was also being hounded by the paparazzi about her personal life," Grisham added. "She had left for a sabbatical at Fox, where she had a great title and reportedly made close to $2 million."

Grisham seemed annoyed that Hicks had retained her status despite leaving, and she indicated other staffers shared her opinion.

"I can't pretend that her presence didn't irritate me," Grisham wrote. "In my eyes and the eyes of others who had stayed to deal with all of the craziness, Hope had taken the easy way out. We all would have loved to take a cushy job somewhere else for two years so that we would be begged to come back to the White House to 'save' the administration."