Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham recalled that during her time on Donald Trump's team, the ex-president told her to lie to the press because all that needed to happen was they say the lie enough.
The conversation she had with CNN's Jim Acosta was about Jan. 6 and Trump's so-called belief that he won the 2020 election. Trump recently renewed the claim of the "big lie" that he won, but Grisham said that there is no doubt in her mind that he knows it isn't true.
"He knows he's lying," Grisham said. "He used to tell me when I was press secretary, go out there and say it. It doesn't matter, Stephanie. Say it over and over and over again. People will believe it. He knows his base believes in him. He knows he can basically say anything, and his base will believe what he's saying."
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She explained that it might help him win the GOP primaries but that it would cause him to lose the general election.
"I think this will help propel him into the general, but I think that independents and center-leaning Republicans are not going to be buying this," continued Grisham. "They're much, much smarter than that. I think he's going to get in trouble with it in the general with these kinds of lies."
Acosta asked her about a recent poll showing that about one-third of people believe that the FBI caused the Jan. 6 attack. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) told CNN later that conservatives like Fox networks and Republican lawmakers helped reinforce the story. But Grisham describes it as similar to a cult. She isn't the first ex-Trump person to describe it in similar terms.
"I think that when you believe in somebody so much, when you believe in somebody like Donald Trump, and I can speak to this because I actually did believe in him for a very long time, I think that when you put it all on the line and believe in somebody, I think it's easier to just want to believe that the FBI, that law enforcement, that the people who go to help us when we're in trouble would be behind something, rather than admitting that the person you've been backing for years and years is a fraud and actually doesn't care about the American people or our country," she explained.
She explained again that she was speaking as someone with personal experience and that she, too, had a difficult time coming to terms with who Donald Trump was "because I really believed in him, his policies, and the person I thought he was."
"I think that people just would rather believe these conspiracy theories rather than admit that they were wrong about this person," she explained.
See her full comments in the video below or at the link here.
‘He knows he’s lying’: Ex-Trump press secretary recalls him telling her to liewww.youtube.com
