Trump dictated a statement that made Grisham feel like 'a crazy cultist' — then he forgot he even composed it

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's new book makes it clear that she thought former President Donald Trump was completely nuts and it details how fearful she was of him.

In one weekend call from the president, Grisham described his ranting about Gen. John Kelly and his comments in the conservative Washington Examiner, in which Kelly hoped that Trump wouldn't hire a "yes-man" as his new chief of staff. Grisham wrote that she dreaded weekend calls from Trump because he could be "set off" by anything. He demanded she "push back hard" against Kelly.

He dictated a statement that sounded the way he dictated tweets to Dan Scavino. "I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president," Trump said, writing and rewriting and rambling in between. She feared she had to get it perfectly correct otherwise "he would get irritated if it wasn't right."

"Good," Trump told her. She described him as being satisfied with himself. "It wasn't lost on me how weird it was for someone to call himself a 'genius,' as Trump did on more than one occasion ('a very stable genius')."

Grisham recalled herself "cringe" when she read the statement back to him.

"First, it made me sound like a complete idiot, your typical crazy Trump cultist," she wrote. "Second, I hadn't liked everything General Kelly had done as chief of staff, but I respected him and his service. Slamming him just didn't sit right with me. As with the first lady, I was once again in the situation of striking back at someone in my own name on behalf of someone else who was actually the one who was pissed. Anyway, I couldn't tell Trump that. Why didn't I simply refuse? That option didn't even occur to me. He was in such a bad mood. He would have flipped out. It was another weird test of loyalty, and I was determined to pass it. But I didn't like it."

She released the statement, recalling a hometown newspaper columnist at the Arizona Republic, who wrote of her statement, "To suggest that a man like Kelly was 'unequipped to handle the genius' of Trump is not just proof that Grisham is hooked on the president's Kool-Aid. It's proof that she's ODed."

Days later, Grisham recalled Trump calling her, telling her how much he appreciated what she'd said about him. It was "as if he didn't remember that he had composed it in the first place."

Grisham's book, "I'll Take Your Questions Now" is available now and RawStory has the coverage of the book here.