Stephanie Grisham defended her role as White House press secretary, saying a lack of press briefings does not mean that she isn’t performing her job well.
“Sarah [Huckabee Sanders], you know, she would go out there and answer everything as honestly as she could, and she was branded a liar and became an SNL character,” Grisham said Sunday on Fox News, comparing herself to her predecessors. “So, I think because none of that is going on with me, I may be doing it right.”
Grisham was asked about the criticism she has faced in the editorial pages of major newspapers, as she has not held a single White House press briefing since assuming the post.
“Given that the 30th person to hold the job, Stephanie Grisham, has never held a briefing since she got the title in July, is she really a press secretary?” Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this month. “Grisham seems unaware — or simply doesn’t care — that she actually works for the American people and is paid with their tax dollars.”
Grisham said President Trump’s style of communicating, usually over Twitter, resonates more with the public than a press briefing between her and reporters could.
“I just had a stat given this morning to me that the president has tweeted or retweeted more than 300 times in the past five days,” she said. “So, that is people, not just the media, but the American public, hearing directly from him every single day, several times a day.”
Grisham, first lady Melania Trump’s former press secretary, said there is no way she could speak for the president more efficiently than he could “on his own.”
Since leaving the White House, Sanders has become an analyst for Fox News.
