Former Trump aide says chiefs of staff were 'scapegoated' when it was Ivanka and Jared 'calling most of the shots'

The latest tell-all book out from Stephanie Grisham focuses a lot of attention on her complaints with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Grisham, who worked as both communications director and chief of staff for Melania Trump, also served as President Donald Trump's press secretary. Stories have already surfaced from the book about Ivanka being referred to as the "princess" by the First Lady, as well as a slew of other backbiting details about their relationship.

Toward the end of her book, Grisham says in passing that the chiefs of staff were all made to be the "scapegoat" for the mistakes made by Jared and Ivanka.

"Mark Meadows had begun his new role as chief of staff in earnest," she recalled. "After Priebus, after Kelly, after Mulvaney, it finally dawned on me what was going on—it only took me three years. Trump, Ivanka, and Jared were the ones calling most of the shots in the White House, but they wouldn't blame themselves when things were f*cked up. No, the fault for plummeting poll numbers or bad press or confusing policies or the inability to keep some promise the president had made or some scandal always fell to the staff."

The pattern, she explained, was to fire them and find someone new and the cycle would begin all over again. Trump would believe they were some "modern version of a James Baker or a Roy Cohn or a P. T. Barnum," Grisham said. But they all ended the same way.

"I guess that somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that after Mulvaney left, I'd be scapegoat number two—another reason Sarah Huckabee Sanders had been smart to quit before that fate befell her," Grisham assessed. "Maybe it was also the reason Hope Hicks had taken her leisurely sabbatical—so Trump would miss her and she could escape being a scapegoat, too."

Another story involved Trump's address to the nation on March 11, 2020, when Ivanka had decided her dad needed to go on television.

"In my mind I kept saying, 'This is not a reality TV show. We cannot address the nation with a bunch of mumbo jumbo just so he looks presidential,'" wrote Grisham. Ivanka couldn't understand why she didn't think that the idea was amazing.

"Birx, Fauci, and the other professionals in the room just watched all the nonsense without comment," the book described. "To their credit, they pretty much kept straight faces, although I imagine they thought they were surrounded by lunatics."

The Trump staff cobbled together a speech that Grisham said was so last minute that the president barely had time to read it ahead of time. He fumbled and the writers made so many mistakes that Grisham said she was flooded with calls, emails, questions and a line of reporters outside her office demanding answers.

"Of course, it was our problem, not Jared's or Ivanka's or Hope's," she wrote. "No, they were in the dining room off of the Oval Office, Trump's usual hangout, congratulating themselves and telling the president how awesome he was."

Grisham's new book, I'll Take Your Questions Now, hit bookstores on Tuesday.