August 24, 2023 • 49 mins
White House communications director Stephanie Grisham and congressman Denver Riggleman were once darlings of the GOP. That is, until they voiced alarm about the President. They’re cast into the political wilderness, where they discover that retribution is swift and brutal.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I mean you think about these barrels here. Each one
of those barrels, you know that's a there's a thousand
bottles of whiskey right there.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
So in those four or five barrels over there.
Speaker 4 (00:13):
You've got this beautiful distillery. I'm looking at a sort
of tractor, like, Oh, this.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Tractor is awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We just got this about six months. Cool toys you got,
We got tractors, trucks, liquor that you make.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Yeh.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Does this help take your mind off?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Oh? Yeah, this is crazy? Yeah, because you know if
if if there's an actual QAnon apocalypse, I have a
lot of liquid gold that I can hear this as barter.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
No, it's.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
As you can hear. Denver Rickleman makes whiskey. He's got
a craft distillery in Afton, Virginia, a small rural community
about a three hour drive from where I live in Washington,
d C. At one time in my life, I'd have
said I was a fan of what Denver produces. Now
that I'm one year sober, not so much. But I'm
(01:06):
still a fan of his. Denver is a former representative
for Virginia's fifth congressional district. He served one term, then
lost his reelection.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I don't know if there's anybody inside DC who likes
me right now. Democrats are Republicans, But out here everybody
loves me. They love me because they're like, you don't
give a shit, like fucking Denver Man.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
He don't give a shit, have a bourbon.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Denver used to be more popular in DC, at least
in the Republican Party. There was a time when he
was a rising star in the House of Representatives, but
that faded the moment he started talking about QAnon. Now
there's lots of people who talk about q Andon, even
in Congress, a disturbing number. Actually, what got Denver canceled
(01:53):
by the Freedom Caucus and other Republicans was that he
started talking about the dangers of that conspiracy movement and
its ties to leaders on the far right, all the
way to President Trump. I caught up with another person
who fled town after the Trump administration, Stephanie Grisham, who
(02:15):
was also once a popular figure in Republican Washington. She
was the White House Communications director, defending the President by
attacking his enemies, including me. At one point, Stephanie got
further away from Washington than Denver did. She now lives
a twenty hour drive from the nation's capital and a
little one stoplight town in the middle of Kansas, appropriately
(02:38):
called Plainville. It's pretty far, but it's worth the trip.
And we had lunch at a place called Burgers and
Beer where we reminisced about our good times together.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Kiley's always like he's a carrier. He should put his
name to this book of lies.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
You can't make that stuff up. Flyles Taylor is a
total treasonous cowardy.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
There's so great to listen to that on a Twitter.
This awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Stephanie was one of the members of the White House
staff to resign in protest after the insurrection on January sixth.
Since then, she's been warning the country about the dangers
she sees if another Trump like leader retakes the White House.
And so we have more in common now and we've
gotten to be friends. People like Stephanie Grisham and Denver
(03:32):
Riggleman aren't your traditional whistleblowers. Many even say they were
complicit in what happened in the Trump years, But ever
since breaking ranks with Trump, they've put themselves on the
front lines of a fight against conspiracy movements consuming the
most radical wing of the Republican Party. This outspokenness didn't
(03:53):
just get them pushed out of Washington like many others.
They got driven further away into the wilderness. I'm Miles Taylor,
and this is the whistleblowers on this show. We're going
deep into the heart of power to meet people who
(04:15):
spoke out about wrongdoing from inside the Trump administration. In
this final episode, we are talking to two dissenters from
the heart of the Republican Party, stalwart conservatives who really
believed in making America great again, but who paid a
price for saying that its leaders weren't so great. Episode eight,
(04:37):
the call is coming from inside the White House. For
a brief moment in time, Republicans loved Virginian distillery owner
and Air Force veteran Denver Riggleman. He was more or
(05:00):
less drafted to run for Congress in twenty eighteen by
the Freedom Caucus, the far right side of the party.
President Trump and his allies were big supporters. In that moment.
Republicans held control of the White House, the Senate, and
the US House. It was a good time to be
an aspiring conservative.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I got a call saying, you know, I was Denver
Your senior consultant at the Pentagon. Your background is perfect,
you probably don't have a chance to win. What would
you at least get in for a committee vote.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Denver's background is kind of perfect on paper. He served
in the Air Force for fifteen years, so he's pro military.
He's a fan of expanding gun rights. His distillery business
makes him against red tape regulation, and he's tough on
a legal immigration. So Denver gets the endorsement from President
(05:50):
Trump and he wins. At first, all goes according to plan.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I was a good fundraiser, did really well, raised a
lot of money, and.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I know, well, that's how it works. God, Miles, I know,
I get it. I knew how to win.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I knew I had to pay off my committee members,
make sure Trump was happy, you know, go around and
make sure I glad hand with the leadership. I was
a balance between leadership and the Freedom Caucus and all
these other caucuses.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
And be that guy.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Take some for the team, Allow me to vote independently
every now and then.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
That whole voting independently every now and then, Denver starts
to realize, that's not a thing I.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Found that had nothing to do with policy in my
votes it was complete loyalty to the president. I remember
an individual I really like coming to me and said,
you have pissed off the big Man too much. You
need to throttle back when they tell you piss off
the big Man. There's no way I should be poking
the eye of the President of the United States because
of the all powerful presence that he had.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
This starts to change Denver's mind about his new friends
on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
My respect for I would say the far right caucus
just started to plummet because I thought either they had
iq limitters right, they've been huff and glue, or you know,
if they really believe this stuff, it's awful.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
He really crosses the line when he votes to stop
a government shutdown.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And at that point I was told that I would
have an opponent, and I remember Mark Meadows coming up
to me and saying, you're going to lose.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You're done.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
At the time, Congressman Mark Meadows was the powerful chair
of the House Freedom Caucus. End quote. Having an opponent
means the party is going to find someone to challenge
Denver in the next Republican primary, someone who's a little
less of a free thinker, more willing to vote the
party line, and Denver then digs himself into a deeper hole.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Not only ravocations of that vote, but the same sex
wedding and then voting not to get rid of pre
existing conditions.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
He officiates a same sex wedding in Virginia between two friends,
then votes in favor of a House bill to protect
the healthcare of Americans with pre existing conditions. Neither position
is popular with conservatives, but Denver believes he's been elected
by the vote of Virginia's fifth district to you know,
(08:03):
represent them.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I have a rural district, right sixty five percent rural.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Seven of the seventeen federally funded community health centers are
in my district. So you're looking at Republicans that are
older that if I went against previoussistant conditions, they would
lose their health care. What people don't understand is some
of the people that are benefiting the most from the
ACA are poor Republicans.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
And again he takes a beating.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I got my face ripped off, he.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Means, both in Congress but also online. He's seen attacks
about him across social media before, but after the gay
wedding and the Affordable Care Act vote, the attacks escalate,
and the accusations are different too. They're honestly kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That was being funded by George Soros, I was a pedophile.
The fact that I'm being called general of the Sodomite
armies is a little weird. And that's why I was
first on the scene against qanhon, because I was the
first to get hit with it.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
At the core of the QAnon movement is a group
of far right conspiracy theorists who believe a deep state,
a secret cabal of people pulls all the strings of
political power in Washington, and that many of them are
sex abusers running secret pedophile rings. The theory originated on
fringe message boards in early twenty seventeen, but quickly spread
(09:21):
across mainstream social media and began gaining a foothold in
the minds of ordinary Americans. Soon, its toxic influence began
to seep into Congress too.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
A new q Andon existed on the periphery.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I've seen the hats and the pins at some of
my committee meetings, but I'm like, what the what the.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Hell is that?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Right?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
This QAnon thing seems to be picking up momentum, and
there are signs that has a violent edge, like when
one follower of QAnon buys into the conspiracy theory that
a pizza restaurant in DC is actually a cover for
a child's sex ring run by Democrats. He drives all
the way from North Carolina to investigate and fires a
(10:02):
rifle inside, threatening employees. Thankfully, no one is hurt. But
when Denver starts raising concerns about QAnon's influence, his colleagues
are not all that interested. In fact, some of them
are caught up in a lot of similar theories.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I would go into committee meetings and they would say
that the fourteenth Amendment that.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Was there to destroy white people.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It got to the point that it was this racist, messianic, apocalyptic,
overwhelming type of title way that I was fighting every
step of the way.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Rather than encouraging Denver to vote his conscience, GOP congressional
leaders expect loyalty to Trump, and rather than supporting Denver's
concerns about QAnon's accusations, he finds the caucus either indifferent
or actually supportive of the theories.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
If you believe it, you're nuts. If you're pandering to that,
you're devious, and you're willing to hurt people to forge
your career. I had personal issues and this automatic assumption
that I was just one of this band of individuals
that had to really kiss ass to move anywhere in
the legislative body.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
I'm just not going to invest in breath Menson do that.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
True to their word, the party backs a challenger for
Denver's House seat in the twenty twenty primary. That challenger
Denver has to face is Bob Good. He's a staunch
opponent of same sex marriage who attacks Denver for officiating
his friend's wedding, saying he's quote out of step with
the party. He's also got some interesting ideas about the
(11:43):
COVID situation.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
This is a phony pandemic. It's a serious virus, but
it's a virus. It's not a pandemic. It's great to
see your face, you stand up against tyranny. Thank you
for being here today. Thank you for saying no to
the insanity.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
So Denver starts to feel like getting reelected is really
important and he suddenly faces a very tough decision.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Trump endorses me for my reelect. I was gonna turn
it down. My consultants come around me. They're like, listen,
you're going against a guy who's batshit crazy. You got
to accept this endorsement because if you don't, there's no
way you can win, ever, and you're going to allow
somebody this nuts to win, right. I gotta tell you what, Miles,
(12:30):
I loose Sleep. I accepted it with the simple fact
that I knew that the guy I was going against
was awful.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Denver has his doubts about accepting the president's endorsement, and
the GOP is clearly having doubts about Denver too, but
he thinks that losing his seat to Bob Good would
only make things worse, so for a time anyway, he
tries to toe the party line. He begrudgingly accepts the
endorsement with the hopes he'll be re elected.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I said, with the endorsement, maybe I can stop this
person from representing the fifth district. I think that's the
only way I can stop this tied away of a shit.
And by the way, I've had to go back in time,
I would refuse the endorsement.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I made a mistake.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
If Denver's worried about Bob Good and the less reality
based members of his caucus, he's actually stunned when in
the spring of twenty twenty, the President himself starts retweeting
QAnon content, and then the gloves are off.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
When he started retweeting that Biden killed Seal Team six
is when I really started to get vocal.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
This was the theory that as Vice President, Joe Biden
ordered the executions of the Seal Team six members who
led the raid against Osama bin Laden. The conspiracy claims
that the raid was botched and Bin Laden was not
actually killed, so Biden ordered the deaths of the Seals
involved to cover up the truth. Trump's tweet gives the
(13:55):
lie extensive airtime, with QAnon followers retweeting that the president
has confirmed their intel.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
When I saw that tweet thread, I went to the
actual YouTube video and there's one point seven million viewers
watching that.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I was pissed and I'm.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Throwing stuff in my office, like I hate this.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I mean, this is wrong. But I started to push
the envelope a little bit.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
That's when I had the first tweets that QAnon has
the same number of letters as Moron.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
This does not go over well.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
When I called that out, I will tell you that's it.
That was it for me.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Voting against the party on pre existing conditions is one thing,
and who knows, maybe voters in Virginia's fifth district were supportive.
Officiating the same sex marriage not a popular move, but
speaking out against President Trump's favorite online maga fanboys, that
is a bridge too far.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
All I had to do was pledge complete fealty.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
I had to apologize for the gay wedding, and that
I had to listen to the committees on.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
How to vote on the floor. I refuse to do
those three things.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Denver's outspokenness costs him. He loses the Republican primary to
pandemic denier Bob Good, who claims it's a victory for
quote the nation's founding Judeo Christian principles.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I lose sleep over the guy that's now the fit
district representatives. And I'll tell you, Miles, it is my fault.
But it was my fault sort of willingly. I refuse
to play the game in that way.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
By the fall of twenty twenty, with the clock running
down on his time in Congress, Denver will not shut
up about the dangers of QAnon. He co sponsors a
US House resolution condemning QAnon and rejecting the conspiracy theories
that it promotes and he speaks about it on the
floor of the House of Representatives.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
QAnon believers have accused me of running a pedophilia ring
for Israel. The grotesque nature of the tweets and Instagram
post and the anti Semitic tripe should cause concern for everyone.
I condemn this movement and urge all of my fellow
members to join me in taking this step to exclude
them and other extreme conspiracy theory from the national discourse.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
He's joined by only one other Republican to openly condemn
q Andon. Meanwhile, Trump continues to retweek q andon theories,
and when questioned about the movement, he says, quote, I've
heard these are people that love our country. Denver goes
on Jake Tapper's show on CNN and blasts the president
(16:23):
only weeks before the election.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That's the kind of things that we cannot do.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Is about the disintegration of really the trust that we
have and being able to talk to each other sort
of in government circles and have this dialogue that's not
based on the insanity of things like QAnon. I remember
warning one individual and he goes, listen, Denver, you're a
neurotic intelligence officer and You're completely wrong that this could
ever go violent.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
When Joe Biden wins in November and Trump begins his
Stop the Steel campaign, Denver sees how the violent rhetoric
of the online world could easily spill out into real life.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I absolutely stayed, unequivocally that there was going to be
something violent, something kinetic that we couldn't even imagine based
on the disinformation language troop were saying, and I hated
to be validated.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Miles.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
If everybody said, Denver, you were wrong, I would have
taken being wrong. I was pointing out the facts and
the data right.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I'm like, this is evil.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
We've not crossing the line or complete radicalization, and a
president that's either off his meds or who has no
conscience at all and no moral boundaries right to what
he was doing. I got a huge collective shrug. That
was it, or you're pissing off the big man.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
I think we know what happens next.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
The first.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
We're coming.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
On January sixth, twenty twenty one, protesters, many of whom
had been radicalized online by movements like QAnon, storm the Capitol.
Five people die, and Denver's replacement in the House, Congressman
Bob Good is one of the one hundred and forty
seven Republicans who vote against certifying the election results.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I think so many of those individuals on January sixth
actually thought our country was under attack and they were
doing the right thing. And that's what I think people
need to realize. And that's just the people who are
willing to do violence. So if you're looking at everybody
else that's involved, everybody else, all the way down to
the local Republican committees that are putting out flyers or
fundraising off the election was stolen.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
I mean it all. It's there.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
It's a chilling culmination of everything Denver has witnessed during
his time in Congress. But January sixth also becomes an
opportunity for other Republicans to break ranks, to say enough
is enough, even the very people working down the hallway
from Trump, like Stephanie Grisham. Let's see how long it's
(19:14):
going to take to get there, Hey, Siri directions to Plainville, Kansas.
Getting directions to Plainville.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Four and a half hours.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Stephanie Grisham served in the Trump White House for all
four years, first in the office of First Lady Milania
Trump and then as one of the president's closest aides.
It was a dream come true for her, but by
the end it was the kind of dream you wake
up from in a cold sweat. By the time she
resigned on January sixth, twenty twenty one, she was ready
(19:55):
to get as far away from Washington, d C.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
As possible.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Stephanie Grisham, former White House Communications Director, picked the middle
of fucking nowhere to move after she left the Trump administration.
I'm using her words.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
By the way, not mine.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Stephanie was President Trump and the first Lady's spinmaster, and
an unapologetic one. So why isn't she doing something today
like leading comms for Trump's social media platform, truth Social,
or firing off press releases from mar A Lago says.
Speaker 7 (20:35):
I'm three minutes away. It doesn't feel like I'm three
minutes away from anything. I'm still in the middle of Cornfield.
So got a gas station, Tom's welding. There appears to
be one stoplight.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
I decided that finding out an answer to that question
was worth taking two planes and driving four and a
half hours to ask her myself. I'll do like hash
browns and one egg.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
I only need one egg.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
How would you like to take over easy.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
No toast her anything that, okay, I'll take a feoff.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
If you had told me this back in twenty nineteen,
that I'd be sitting at a place called Burger's in
Beer in Plainville with Stephanie and her sister, I would
have said probably not. That was the year I published
my book A Warning, Still as anonymous. When the book
came out, it was essentially Stephanie's job to go after
(21:43):
anyone who was critical of the president, and I thought
she did it with a disturbing amount of zeal.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
Whoever wrote the anonymous book is a coward all across government,
the President has been saying, and I think it's been
proven time and again there are obstructionists all across this
government who are working against the president.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
That clip from Fox and Friends was pretty typical. Stephanie
certainly sounds like a true believer, and she was. She
had been with President Trump since the start of the campaign.
When she first saw him do his thing on the
rally circuit.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
Watching him speak like I was mesmerized. I was not
mesmerized necessarily by him, but the people in the audience
were just into it and the cheers, and they really
liked him, and I had never seen such a crowd.
I really hadn't, and I had done all these Romney rallies,
and so at that moment, I was like, I'm in.
(22:39):
I'm sticking with him. This is fun.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Stephanie was living in Arizona and had worked on Mitt
Romney's presidential campaign. She was then spokesperson for Arizona's Attorney
General Tom Horne and the Republican Caucus in the state House.
She joins Trump's team as a presaide. It's like nothing
she's ever seen before.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
We were doing like five events a day or something,
and this one day we were running so behind, and
our last event of the day was in a fucking
like a barn somewhere in like Appalachia, and we were
literally three hours late. So by the time we got
to this barn, I think it was like one in
the morning, and we walked in and the place was packed.
(23:24):
People were on the floor sleeping, And I walked in
and I was like, my god, like, this is a movement.
This is not normal. And that's when I knew. I
was like, he's going to win.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Washington insiders, the media, they didn't see it until election
night and the press.
Speaker 6 (23:41):
Was like what what? And the mood started to take.
It just took this turn. You could feel it in
the room. There was just this like, oh my gosh,
did we just do this?
Speaker 4 (23:56):
The Trump campaign team entering the White House can't help
but feel defiant, ready to prove wrong all the critics
who ever doubted them.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
I think our mindset was like, you all told us
we were terrible, y'all, you know, made fun of us,
And now here we are and fuck y'all.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Right away, Stephanie is folded into the transition team and
it's a heady time, Like I said, a dream come true.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
One day, Sean Spicer called he was going to be
Press secretary, and he asked if I would be a
deputy press secretary, which had always been like a dream
of mine. I even kept a picture of the White
House in my office all the time, everywhere I worked
to remind myself of my goal. So when he offered
me deputy press secretary, I was like, yes, Oh my gosh.
I watched West Wing. I was convinced I'd be ce J. Craig.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Lots of girls probably wanted to be CJ. Craig. The
White House Press secretary played by the incomparable Alison Janny
on NBC's The West Wing. I mean, nobody could tell
it like it is like her.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
Trouble with your spen is that we're not going to
get anywhere putting on a calm face.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
We need to pick a fight. Why because in politics,
if you're not on offense, you're on defense.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
I'd be like fifty and funny at the podium. You know,
I've had a goldfish and data reporter secretly, like I
knew i'd be.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Heart turns out being deputy Press secretary under Sean Spicer
is not actually like being CJ. Craig at all. In
the first press briefing, Spicer at the behest of the
new president, lies about the crowd size at the inauguration
and is humiliated all over cable news and Spicy, as
(25:35):
he was called on SNL, is too focused on not
making Trump angry to develop much of a working relationship
with his deputy.
Speaker 6 (25:42):
I was not in any meetings. He literally had me
taking the press in and out of the oval, in
and out of the cabinet room. Trump really liked me always.
He'd see me come in, he'd call me over, he'd
ask me who was being nice, you know, he'd ask
me how things are playing. I was like, oh my god, goosh,
here I am with this awesome job title, but I'm
(26:04):
not doing anything.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
But nine months in she gets a different opportunity. She's
tapped by the East Wing of the White House to
be chief of Staff and Press Secretary for First Lady
Milania Trump.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
It was like nirvana. We came in at like eight
thirty nine, whereas before I'd be in the West Wing
at seven am, roll out of there at four thirty.
Everyone was beautiful and dressed so beautiful.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Throughout the next two years working for the First Lady,
Stephanie is shielded from most of the insanity. The travel band,
Charlottesville family separation, the Michael Cohen controversy, the list goes
on and on. She's fully aware of what's happening. But
in the East Wing, your job is to protect the
First Lady, to put out statements about her initiatives and
(26:50):
make her look good.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
When you're working. Then in the East Wing, people including
the press, are like more forgiving of you. Well you
work for Milania, Well, okay. She puts out statements kind
of against her own husband. She is not four kids
in cages as it was talked about. I think that
I had gotten in a place that again, we were
(27:12):
very confident, cocky. It was terrible with how much power
we had because Trump just always wanted to keep Malania happy.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
But in June of twenty nineteen, then Press Secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders resigns and Trump decides that, in addition to
still working with Milania, Stephanie should replace Sanders and take
on the role of White House Communications Director, so she's
back in the belly of the beast. And then some I.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Had such reservations about taking the Press secretary job, and
my gut kept telling me, don't do it, don't do it.
I just knew it would be bad, but I also
was like, this is my dream. I will be able
to say I reached my goal my whole life, this
is what I wanted to do. You know, every other
politician now hate you because you work for Trump, so
(28:03):
you're never going to probably be at the White House again.
I would still work for missus Trump was because I
was so against working just for him, and I thought
that she would keep me protected and that I would
be able to call her when he wanted to do
real crazy stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Magical thinking was just the norm in this White House.
Speaker 6 (28:23):
One word comes to mind, it's just pathetic. And I
would just remind Mitt Romney that he is not president.
It's hard for me to actually hear the word Republican
and Mitt Romney in the same sentence.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
That's Stephanie on Fox Business bashing her former boss Mitt
Romney for not falling in line during Trump's first impeachment.
This is her job now, and here she is on
Fox and Friends running down the White House press pool
while defending her decision not to hold press briefings.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
He's his own best spokesperson, It's true. And also he's
the most accessible president in history. And to be honest,
the briefings had become a lot of theater, and I
think that a lot of or were doing it.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
To get famous.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
I mean, yeah, they're writing books now. I mean they're
all getting famous off of this presidency.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
When my former boss, General John Kelly left the administration
and made the mistake of saying something critical about the president,
he got the Stephanie treatment too. She told CNN quote,
I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped
to handle the genius of our great president unquote. Yeah,
(29:28):
it sounds like something out of Pyongyang, North Korea, not Washington.
Stephanie transforms herself into a voracious defender of President Trump.
She spins for him, blocks the media from talking to him,
and attacks anyone who questions his agenda. But behind closed doors,
she's starting to find that the job is hell.
Speaker 6 (29:49):
I immediately started to regret it right when I got there,
because it's so stupid, because you knew of all the
chaos going on. You read the stories of everybody you
know biting each other in the back and snipe in
each other. And but then you got in there and
you saw it. And I had Jared constantly overriding me.
I had people maneuvering, I had Peter Navarro bothering me
(30:13):
every other day. I'm seeing his anger.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
More and more Trump's anger. That is because she spends
a lot of time with him.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
I started taking anti anxiety drugs when I went back
to the West Wing pretty darn quick. So I would
wake up, I would watch the news, I would be
on Twitter, and then he would come down, and from
that moment on, my day was done. Like it was
like I had to be in the oval or in
the dining room. I wasn't getting any work done. I
was just watching TV with him.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
It's all consuming.
Speaker 6 (30:44):
You just have to be there to like make him
happy and tell him how great he was all day.
And then the weekends. He would call me every weekend,
and I remember every weekend being so uptight waiting for
his morning call, and the minute the operator call, I
would be on Twitter and like frantically looking at Twitter
while I'm waiting to be connected so that I could
(31:06):
know what was happening. The anxiety was though on those weekends,
which trump are you gonna get? Some mornings it was like, hey, darling, Hey,
how are you? How's the plane okay? And some days
it would be like what the fuck?
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Where the fuck are people?
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Why aren't you on tevinge screaming at you?
Speaker 4 (31:28):
This is plenty bad on its own, but for Stephanie,
it also dredges up old feelings.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
Going back to some of my childhood stuff that I
don't really talk about. But I dealt with a lot
of abuse from a man when I was growing up,
and I think that that kind of triggered me. I
had no idea, but I've taken had a lot of
therapy since the White House.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Stephanie's experience is different from a lot of other people
we've talked to for this show. It's not the policies
Trump has enacted or the administration's efforts to skirt the law.
These are not the things that change her mind. It's
the man himself. She gets to know Donald Trump in
a way that few people do, and she's terrified by
(32:10):
what she sees.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
It is a cycle of abuse because his anger is
so swift and so severe and so mean. I feel
like a snowflake saying that he's mean. It's not it's cruel.
All you do is you want to make that version
of that monster go away. And that's what abuse is. Right,
(32:35):
It was awful, and so my anxiety got really bad,
really really bad.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
But despite all of that, she stays in the job,
attacking the president's enemies and promoting his talking points.
Speaker 6 (32:50):
You don't want to admit to the people who told you,
don't do this, he's bad or whatever. That's the other
part of it, your pride. You're still like, oh, I
don't want to tell. So that's the part of like,
it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
So when does it become not fine?
Speaker 6 (33:05):
When it really started to turn, and not for the
reason you would think. I know, I'm supposed to say
COVID started to turn because we weren't. We fucked it up,
which we did. When Meadows came in and Mick and
his team left, you know, things went really downhill for me.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
In March of twenty twenty, Mark Meadows replaces Mick mulvaney
as White House Chief of Staff, and Meadows has no
qualms about placating the president's every need and inclination, no
matter how bad, and he's more than willing to throw
people under the bus.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
Suddenly, for the first time ever, I was getting bad
press stories leaked about me. I went back to the
East Wing. And that's actually when I started commuting here
to Plainville. I was so far removed from the election,
I really was, and I was already like, I'm done
at the end of this. I had already made that
that was my plan. People all think that I would
still have stayed. Fuck no, No, I was done. I
(34:03):
knew I would never go back. I was a mess.
I came here and I was a mess. When the
whole stop the steal was happening, I was just like,
of course, that's what we're doing. Like at that point,
I was so jaded. I was only loyal to Missus Trump.
I was staying for her, and that is all I
cared about. Everything else. I did my best to like
(34:24):
either drink away or just ignore, because at that point
my mental health was really suffering, really bad.
Speaker 8 (34:34):
All of us here today do not want to see
our election victory stolen by a bald and radical left Democrats,
which is what they're doing, and stolen by the fake
news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing.
We will never give up. We will never concede. It
doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft could go.
Speaker 6 (34:57):
I had a bad feeling just because it was the
and he was so angry and stuff. But I certainly
didn't know what was going to happen. And I remember
I had the TV on and I was listening to
him at the rally, and I remember being like, dude, like,
why are you why are you needlessly doing this? This
is so not healthy for the country. And then when
(35:26):
everything started to happen at the Capitol, I sent Missus
Trump a text and said, do you want to put
a statement out? Basically saying like you have the right
to protest, but it needs to be peaceful. It was
not political at all. It was truly just a hey, everybody,
let's calm down and be peaceful. And she just wrote back, No,
(35:46):
that's it.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
The first lady does what her husband does best.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
Now she has said she had no idea what was
happening and that it's my fault because I didn't brief
her as her chief of staff, which is just bullshit,
Like she knew everything that was going on all the time.
There was always a TV on. I think it just
all came to a crash. To see it so vividly,
I think it felt like I was watching my own
self burn down.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
She's one of the leading staffers in the administration who
resigns That very day I resigned.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
I sent her an email like five ten minutes later,
and I resigned, and I ce Seed, a senior advisor
of her, so that I couldn't take it back. She
sent me a really nice text that said, you know,
I'm sorry to get your email. I value your friendship.
And she has never spoken to me again.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Stephanie moves to Plainville permanently, but it's not really over
for her.
Speaker 6 (36:51):
I felt so safe here that that was nice, but
I still was like riddle with anxiety. But then when
I decided to go forward with the book, I thought
it would just be more therapy for me than anything
like write it down. I processed a lot of feelings
and like I remembered a lot of stuff where I
(37:12):
was like, well, that was fucked up of me, And
I realized that I too was pretty fucked up a
lot of the times. And so that's when I decided,
you know, I'm not going to like just blame everybody else,
you know, and be a victim. I'm going to also
own kind of my part in it.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Stephanie's book I'll Take Your Questions Now is one of
the first books published from a true MAGA insider who
defected from the movement, and she doesn't hold back. She
shares damaging revelations, but also, unlike some others from the
administration who wrote books in the aftermath, she doesn't shy
away from her own role. Predictably, the MAGA crowd goes
(37:50):
after her. Did you know before it went live, did
you have a sense of the whole force of the
MAGA side that's going to cut after me?
Speaker 9 (38:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (38:01):
Because I used to do it to people. One thing
we were really good at was destroying people who went
against us, and I was part of them, so I
knew I was prepared. I did it to people myself.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
She also appears before the January sixth Committee. On MSNBC,
host Nicole Wallace recounts Stephanie's testimony about Trump's behavior during
the insurrection.
Speaker 10 (38:27):
He was sitting in the dining room and he was
just watching it all unfold.
Speaker 6 (38:32):
Some of his comments were.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
That these people looked very trashy, but also look at
what fighters they were.
Speaker 6 (38:39):
He loved how they were fighting for him.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
The media is kind of skeptical about all of this.
Joy Behar on the View summed it up for a
lot of people.
Speaker 10 (38:48):
These people who are now all like recovering addicts, recovering
ADATs in the Trump world that come on even on
this show, They come on this show, they go on
on the shows, and they suddenly turning on Trump.
Speaker 6 (39:01):
Where were you all.
Speaker 10 (39:02):
That time when he was talking about grabbing women. It's
just disgraceful. We're onto all of them.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
I just feel like I am a person who has complete, inside,
intimate knowledge of this man, his psyche, the things that
motivate him, I've seen it, and I just feel like
I have a responsibility to educate people about who he is.
I want people to know who he is behind the scenes.
(39:31):
So I just, yeah, I feel a responsibility, I think
because it will be so much worse if he gets
in there again, so much worse.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Power couple Peter Baker and Susan Glasser were two of
the many journalists who were stonewalled by Trump's press operation.
I asked them what they thought about Stephanie's journey.
Speaker 11 (39:53):
There are no heroes in this story, and Stephanie Grisham
is an example. Arguably her Her police in White House
history will be as the White House prosecutor who never
gave a single press conference. Not exactly a badge of honor,
a badge of glory. And yet there's this interesting argument,
is it ever too late to do the right thing?
Speaker 9 (40:16):
She was there for three and a half years, not
complaining at least publicly about anything, and then at the
end breaks with him. And yet I think by breaking
with him and then trying to explore it and understand
herself and how she did this in her book, and
to then bear witness in effect of what she saw,
you know, she's a very human story. There's something rather
(40:38):
remarkable about that to try to rethink your life, to
rethink your choices, and to say I did something that
I'm not proud of anymore, and I'm willing to say
it out loud.
Speaker 11 (40:48):
It strikes me that Grisham, who then also produced a
memoir and went public with her concerns, including some very
very damaging stories to both Trump and Milania Trump, that
she is an example that people should study of, Like,
how is it that those who didn't have any particular
(41:10):
ideological reason to do so, you know, didn't even particularly
like Donald Trump, gets sucked into doing something so wrong.
Speaker 9 (41:21):
The dissenter of the Republican Party have in fact been
consigned to the furthest reaches of American politics, if they're
even in American politics anymore.
Speaker 11 (41:30):
That is the story writ large of the Trump presidency
is a story of his domination, not over the country.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
He was never.
Speaker 11 (41:41):
Supported by fifty one percent of Americans on any day
in his presidency, and yet his domination of the Republican
Party was remarkable. In purging dissenters, in marginalizing them, in
demonizing them. He has an innate understanding, an instinctual understanding
that the threat from within was always the potentially the
(42:03):
biggest one, and so that was always the kind of
apostasy that he needed to punish the most, that of
somebody like Stephanie Grisham.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
The party has closed ranks around this idea, discouraging anyone
who dissents from the status quo from a political future,
and they're also making sure to leave the outliers to
fend for themselves when they come under attack. The message
is basically, you're on your own. When I went to
see Denver for his interview, he was under just such
(42:33):
an attack. He had just learned he was being sued
by a far right paramilitary group for fifty million dollars.
The group was incensed after Denver published his book The Breach,
about his work returning to Capitol Hill as a staffer
on the January sixth Select Committee. He was part of
the team investigating groups responsible for the attack on the Capitol.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Crazy has so much more energy than sanity. And that's
the thing is that saying people somewhere need to find
the energy, you know, to match that type of crazy
or that type of zealotry you know that's coming from certain.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
Groups such battles don't give Denver any appetite to return
to politics.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
I would rather light myself on fire than run for
office again. I've never seen such depravity. I think Congress
is a disease right now. And the fact that the
people that are going in there are the people that
will do anything for power, and the talented people, the
ones you want in public service are looking over there,
(43:36):
like do I want to swim in that sewer?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Hell no.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Stephanie doesn't want any part of the sewer either, but
the sewer often comes to her.
Speaker 6 (43:45):
They're suing me. They still try to shop stories. So
I definitely had moments of like, should I do this?
Like all my family's going to see all this terrible
stuff about me?
Speaker 5 (43:54):
Now?
Speaker 6 (43:55):
Is my family going to be ashamed of me? Or
you know, my kid's going to get threatened.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Still, while they may be out of the Washington game,
both Stephanie and Denver see some value, even power in
talking about their experience on a local level, Like when
someone comes in for a bourbon at Denver's distillery.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
The people that come in here, I don't get angry.
Just in my place. You're on my turf, so I
can be kind and loving and we can have really
good discussions here, and that one on one is how
I get people. Me going on a CNNMSNBC, Fox, BBC
doesn't turn anybody. Nobody gives a shit. Does me going
on a show? Change one person?
Speaker 5 (44:40):
Now?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Now? Not one person?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
And I'm like, God, if I could just get with
them and have a beer or a bourbon, I know
I can turn them. There you go.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
So that's strength.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Or over Bloody Mary's at burgers and beer.
Speaker 6 (44:55):
I feel a responsibility. It's and that's the thing. It's
not fun. I'm not trying to be relevant. You just
get shit on from both sides. It's you know, you
should have spoken out sooner, you should have done this,
you should have done that, and keep and I think
that's the hard part. And that's what I'm trying to
figure out a way to do, is explain to people
(45:16):
the consequences. I feel like my ultimate weapon is the
truth now and me being authentic and being like, yeah,
that happened.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
When we started this series, I was wrestling with my
own issues around whistleblowing, namely whether I came forward soon
enough and whether doing it anonymously was actually the right choice.
I'm not gonna lie. It was painful to relive that experience.
Coming forward cost me a lot, a home, a job,
(45:58):
close relationships, the security of my immediate family. I struggled
with depression and substance abuse, something that I really never
thought would happen, and I definitely didn't think I would
be talking about publicly. I don't say this for sympathy,
but because what surprised me most about the conversations we
had making this show was that just about every one
(46:20):
of the people you've heard this season went through something similar.
They were called liars, traders, attention seekers, deep state hacks.
Their careers suffered, their lives have been upended, all because
they felt they had to say something. When I was
in college, I took econ one O one, and you
(46:40):
hear a lot about supply and demand. If the price
of something is too high, there are basically two ways
to lower it. You can decrease the demand or you
can increase the supply. Now, when it comes to people
speaking out, we need there to be demand, a demand
for the truth. So if you want to lower the
(47:01):
price people have to pay for stepping up and giving
us that truth, we have to increase the supply. When
more people are willing to say something about wrongdoing, the price,
the consequence for them, it has to come down. But
there's something else about the stories we heard making this
show something I personally find pretty inspiring, and that's the
(47:25):
fact that almost no one we spoke to regrets what
they did. They might have done it another way, but
they're pretty clear that it needed to be done and
it had to be them, whatever the price, and that
gives me some much needed optimism. The Whistleblowers is a
(48:04):
production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best Case Studios
and ARC Media. It was hosted by me Miles Taylor
and written by me Isabel Evans and Adam Pinkiss. Isabel
Evans is also our producer. Associate producers are Hannah Leebelwitz Lockhart,
and Ashley Warren. Darcy Peacle is consulting producer. Zach Herman
is the VP of Development of ARC Media. This episode
(48:25):
was edited by Daniel Turreck with assistants from Max Michael Miller.
Original music is by James Newberry. Executive producers are Me
Miles Taylor, Adam Pinkis for Best Case Studios and Barrick
Goodman for ARC Media. Beth Ann Macaluso is our executive
producer for iHeartMedia, along with Ali Perry. Special thanks to
Kevin Famm, all of our contributors and interviewees, and our
(48:46):
intern Anna Levitt, and a big thanks to the teams
at Government Accountability Project and Whistleblower Aid, two of the
best organizations for government and private sector whistleblowers seeking legal support.
Follow and rate the Whistleblowers on the podcast site of
your choice to hear what these whistleblowers and others have
to say about what they believe will happen under a
(49:06):
second Trump administration or in the White House of AMaGA successor,
you can pick up my new book, Blowback from Simon
and Schuster
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I mean you think about these barrels here. Each one
of those barrels, you know that's a there's a thousand
bottles of whiskey right there.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
So in those four or five barrels over there.
Speaker 4 (00:13):
You've got this beautiful distillery. I'm looking at a sort
of tractor, like, Oh, this.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Tractor is awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We just got this about six months. Cool toys you got,
We got tractors, trucks, liquor that you make.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Yeh.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Does this help take your mind off?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Oh? Yeah, this is crazy? Yeah, because you know if
if if there's an actual QAnon apocalypse, I have a
lot of liquid gold that I can hear this as barter.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
No, it's.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
As you can hear. Denver Rickleman makes whiskey. He's got
a craft distillery in Afton, Virginia, a small rural community
about a three hour drive from where I live in Washington,
d C. At one time in my life, I'd have
said I was a fan of what Denver produces. Now
that I'm one year sober, not so much. But I'm
(01:06):
still a fan of his. Denver is a former representative
for Virginia's fifth congressional district. He served one term, then
lost his reelection.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I don't know if there's anybody inside DC who likes
me right now. Democrats are Republicans, But out here everybody
loves me. They love me because they're like, you don't
give a shit, like fucking Denver Man.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
He don't give a shit, have a bourbon.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Denver used to be more popular in DC, at least
in the Republican Party. There was a time when he
was a rising star in the House of Representatives, but
that faded the moment he started talking about QAnon. Now
there's lots of people who talk about q Andon, even
in Congress, a disturbing number. Actually, what got Denver canceled
(01:53):
by the Freedom Caucus and other Republicans was that he
started talking about the dangers of that conspiracy movement and
its ties to leaders on the far right, all the
way to President Trump. I caught up with another person
who fled town after the Trump administration, Stephanie Grisham, who
(02:15):
was also once a popular figure in Republican Washington. She
was the White House Communications director, defending the President by
attacking his enemies, including me. At one point, Stephanie got
further away from Washington than Denver did. She now lives
a twenty hour drive from the nation's capital and a
little one stoplight town in the middle of Kansas, appropriately
(02:38):
called Plainville. It's pretty far, but it's worth the trip.
And we had lunch at a place called Burgers and
Beer where we reminisced about our good times together.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Kiley's always like he's a carrier. He should put his
name to this book of lies.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
You can't make that stuff up. Flyles Taylor is a
total treasonous cowardy.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
There's so great to listen to that on a Twitter.
This awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Stephanie was one of the members of the White House
staff to resign in protest after the insurrection on January sixth.
Since then, she's been warning the country about the dangers
she sees if another Trump like leader retakes the White House.
And so we have more in common now and we've
gotten to be friends. People like Stephanie Grisham and Denver
(03:32):
Riggleman aren't your traditional whistleblowers. Many even say they were
complicit in what happened in the Trump years, But ever
since breaking ranks with Trump, they've put themselves on the
front lines of a fight against conspiracy movements consuming the
most radical wing of the Republican Party. This outspokenness didn't
(03:53):
just get them pushed out of Washington like many others.
They got driven further away into the wilderness. I'm Miles Taylor,
and this is the whistleblowers on this show. We're going
deep into the heart of power to meet people who
(04:15):
spoke out about wrongdoing from inside the Trump administration. In
this final episode, we are talking to two dissenters from
the heart of the Republican Party, stalwart conservatives who really
believed in making America great again, but who paid a
price for saying that its leaders weren't so great. Episode eight,
(04:37):
the call is coming from inside the White House. For
a brief moment in time, Republicans loved Virginian distillery owner
and Air Force veteran Denver Riggleman. He was more or
(05:00):
less drafted to run for Congress in twenty eighteen by
the Freedom Caucus, the far right side of the party.
President Trump and his allies were big supporters. In that moment.
Republicans held control of the White House, the Senate, and
the US House. It was a good time to be
an aspiring conservative.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I got a call saying, you know, I was Denver
Your senior consultant at the Pentagon. Your background is perfect,
you probably don't have a chance to win. What would
you at least get in for a committee vote.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Denver's background is kind of perfect on paper. He served
in the Air Force for fifteen years, so he's pro military.
He's a fan of expanding gun rights. His distillery business
makes him against red tape regulation, and he's tough on
a legal immigration. So Denver gets the endorsement from President
(05:50):
Trump and he wins. At first, all goes according to plan.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I was a good fundraiser, did really well, raised a
lot of money, and.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I know, well, that's how it works. God, Miles, I know,
I get it. I knew how to win.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I knew I had to pay off my committee members,
make sure Trump was happy, you know, go around and
make sure I glad hand with the leadership. I was
a balance between leadership and the Freedom Caucus and all
these other caucuses.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
And be that guy.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Take some for the team, Allow me to vote independently
every now and then.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
That whole voting independently every now and then, Denver starts
to realize, that's not a thing I.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Found that had nothing to do with policy in my
votes it was complete loyalty to the president. I remember
an individual I really like coming to me and said,
you have pissed off the big Man too much. You
need to throttle back when they tell you piss off
the big Man. There's no way I should be poking
the eye of the President of the United States because
of the all powerful presence that he had.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
This starts to change Denver's mind about his new friends
on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
My respect for I would say the far right caucus
just started to plummet because I thought either they had
iq limitters right, they've been huff and glue, or you know,
if they really believe this stuff, it's awful.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
He really crosses the line when he votes to stop
a government shutdown.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And at that point I was told that I would
have an opponent, and I remember Mark Meadows coming up
to me and saying, you're going to lose.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You're done.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
At the time, Congressman Mark Meadows was the powerful chair
of the House Freedom Caucus. End quote. Having an opponent
means the party is going to find someone to challenge
Denver in the next Republican primary, someone who's a little
less of a free thinker, more willing to vote the
party line, and Denver then digs himself into a deeper hole.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Not only ravocations of that vote, but the same sex
wedding and then voting not to get rid of pre
existing conditions.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
He officiates a same sex wedding in Virginia between two friends,
then votes in favor of a House bill to protect
the healthcare of Americans with pre existing conditions. Neither position
is popular with conservatives, but Denver believes he's been elected
by the vote of Virginia's fifth district to you know,
(08:03):
represent them.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I have a rural district, right sixty five percent rural.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Seven of the seventeen federally funded community health centers are
in my district. So you're looking at Republicans that are
older that if I went against previoussistant conditions, they would
lose their health care. What people don't understand is some
of the people that are benefiting the most from the
ACA are poor Republicans.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
And again he takes a beating.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I got my face ripped off, he.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Means, both in Congress but also online. He's seen attacks
about him across social media before, but after the gay
wedding and the Affordable Care Act vote, the attacks escalate,
and the accusations are different too. They're honestly kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That was being funded by George Soros, I was a pedophile.
The fact that I'm being called general of the Sodomite
armies is a little weird. And that's why I was
first on the scene against qanhon, because I was the
first to get hit with it.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
At the core of the QAnon movement is a group
of far right conspiracy theorists who believe a deep state,
a secret cabal of people pulls all the strings of
political power in Washington, and that many of them are
sex abusers running secret pedophile rings. The theory originated on
fringe message boards in early twenty seventeen, but quickly spread
(09:21):
across mainstream social media and began gaining a foothold in
the minds of ordinary Americans. Soon, its toxic influence began
to seep into Congress too.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
A new q Andon existed on the periphery.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I've seen the hats and the pins at some of
my committee meetings, but I'm like, what the what the.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Hell is that?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Right?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
This QAnon thing seems to be picking up momentum, and
there are signs that has a violent edge, like when
one follower of QAnon buys into the conspiracy theory that
a pizza restaurant in DC is actually a cover for
a child's sex ring run by Democrats. He drives all
the way from North Carolina to investigate and fires a
(10:02):
rifle inside, threatening employees. Thankfully, no one is hurt. But
when Denver starts raising concerns about QAnon's influence, his colleagues
are not all that interested. In fact, some of them
are caught up in a lot of similar theories.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I would go into committee meetings and they would say
that the fourteenth Amendment that.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Was there to destroy white people.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It got to the point that it was this racist, messianic, apocalyptic,
overwhelming type of title way that I was fighting every
step of the way.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Rather than encouraging Denver to vote his conscience, GOP congressional
leaders expect loyalty to Trump, and rather than supporting Denver's
concerns about QAnon's accusations, he finds the caucus either indifferent
or actually supportive of the theories.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
If you believe it, you're nuts. If you're pandering to that,
you're devious, and you're willing to hurt people to forge
your career. I had personal issues and this automatic assumption
that I was just one of this band of individuals
that had to really kiss ass to move anywhere in
the legislative body.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
I'm just not going to invest in breath Menson do that.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
True to their word, the party backs a challenger for
Denver's House seat in the twenty twenty primary. That challenger
Denver has to face is Bob Good. He's a staunch
opponent of same sex marriage who attacks Denver for officiating
his friend's wedding, saying he's quote out of step with
the party. He's also got some interesting ideas about the
(11:43):
COVID situation.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
This is a phony pandemic. It's a serious virus, but
it's a virus. It's not a pandemic. It's great to
see your face, you stand up against tyranny. Thank you
for being here today. Thank you for saying no to
the insanity.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
So Denver starts to feel like getting reelected is really
important and he suddenly faces a very tough decision.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Trump endorses me for my reelect. I was gonna turn
it down. My consultants come around me. They're like, listen,
you're going against a guy who's batshit crazy. You got
to accept this endorsement because if you don't, there's no
way you can win, ever, and you're going to allow
somebody this nuts to win, right. I gotta tell you what, Miles,
(12:30):
I loose Sleep. I accepted it with the simple fact
that I knew that the guy I was going against
was awful.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Denver has his doubts about accepting the president's endorsement, and
the GOP is clearly having doubts about Denver too, but
he thinks that losing his seat to Bob Good would
only make things worse, so for a time anyway, he
tries to toe the party line. He begrudgingly accepts the
endorsement with the hopes he'll be re elected.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I said, with the endorsement, maybe I can stop this
person from representing the fifth district. I think that's the
only way I can stop this tied away of a shit.
And by the way, I've had to go back in time,
I would refuse the endorsement.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I made a mistake.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
If Denver's worried about Bob Good and the less reality
based members of his caucus, he's actually stunned when in
the spring of twenty twenty, the President himself starts retweeting
QAnon content, and then the gloves are off.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
When he started retweeting that Biden killed Seal Team six
is when I really started to get vocal.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
This was the theory that as Vice President, Joe Biden
ordered the executions of the Seal Team six members who
led the raid against Osama bin Laden. The conspiracy claims
that the raid was botched and Bin Laden was not
actually killed, so Biden ordered the deaths of the Seals
involved to cover up the truth. Trump's tweet gives the
(13:55):
lie extensive airtime, with QAnon followers retweeting that the president
has confirmed their intel.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
When I saw that tweet thread, I went to the
actual YouTube video and there's one point seven million viewers
watching that.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I was pissed and I'm.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Throwing stuff in my office, like I hate this.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I mean, this is wrong. But I started to push
the envelope a little bit.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
That's when I had the first tweets that QAnon has
the same number of letters as Moron.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
This does not go over well.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
When I called that out, I will tell you that's it.
That was it for me.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Voting against the party on pre existing conditions is one thing,
and who knows, maybe voters in Virginia's fifth district were supportive.
Officiating the same sex marriage not a popular move, but
speaking out against President Trump's favorite online maga fanboys, that
is a bridge too far.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
All I had to do was pledge complete fealty.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
I had to apologize for the gay wedding, and that
I had to listen to the committees on.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
How to vote on the floor. I refuse to do
those three things.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Denver's outspokenness costs him. He loses the Republican primary to
pandemic denier Bob Good, who claims it's a victory for
quote the nation's founding Judeo Christian principles.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I lose sleep over the guy that's now the fit
district representatives. And I'll tell you, Miles, it is my fault.
But it was my fault sort of willingly. I refuse
to play the game in that way.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
By the fall of twenty twenty, with the clock running
down on his time in Congress, Denver will not shut
up about the dangers of QAnon. He co sponsors a
US House resolution condemning QAnon and rejecting the conspiracy theories
that it promotes and he speaks about it on the
floor of the House of Representatives.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
QAnon believers have accused me of running a pedophilia ring
for Israel. The grotesque nature of the tweets and Instagram
post and the anti Semitic tripe should cause concern for everyone.
I condemn this movement and urge all of my fellow
members to join me in taking this step to exclude
them and other extreme conspiracy theory from the national discourse.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
He's joined by only one other Republican to openly condemn
q Andon. Meanwhile, Trump continues to retweek q andon theories,
and when questioned about the movement, he says, quote, I've
heard these are people that love our country. Denver goes
on Jake Tapper's show on CNN and blasts the president
(16:23):
only weeks before the election.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That's the kind of things that we cannot do.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Is about the disintegration of really the trust that we
have and being able to talk to each other sort
of in government circles and have this dialogue that's not
based on the insanity of things like QAnon. I remember
warning one individual and he goes, listen, Denver, you're a
neurotic intelligence officer and You're completely wrong that this could
ever go violent.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
When Joe Biden wins in November and Trump begins his
Stop the Steel campaign, Denver sees how the violent rhetoric
of the online world could easily spill out into real life.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I absolutely stayed, unequivocally that there was going to be
something violent, something kinetic that we couldn't even imagine based
on the disinformation language troop were saying, and I hated
to be validated.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Miles.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
If everybody said, Denver, you were wrong, I would have
taken being wrong. I was pointing out the facts and
the data right.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I'm like, this is evil.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
We've not crossing the line or complete radicalization, and a
president that's either off his meds or who has no
conscience at all and no moral boundaries right to what
he was doing. I got a huge collective shrug. That
was it, or you're pissing off the big man.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
I think we know what happens next.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
The first.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
We're coming.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
On January sixth, twenty twenty one, protesters, many of whom
had been radicalized online by movements like QAnon, storm the Capitol.
Five people die, and Denver's replacement in the House, Congressman
Bob Good is one of the one hundred and forty
seven Republicans who vote against certifying the election results.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I think so many of those individuals on January sixth
actually thought our country was under attack and they were
doing the right thing. And that's what I think people
need to realize. And that's just the people who are
willing to do violence. So if you're looking at everybody
else that's involved, everybody else, all the way down to
the local Republican committees that are putting out flyers or
fundraising off the election was stolen.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
I mean it all. It's there.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
It's a chilling culmination of everything Denver has witnessed during
his time in Congress. But January sixth also becomes an
opportunity for other Republicans to break ranks, to say enough
is enough, even the very people working down the hallway
from Trump, like Stephanie Grisham. Let's see how long it's
(19:14):
going to take to get there, Hey, Siri directions to Plainville, Kansas.
Getting directions to Plainville.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Four and a half hours.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Stephanie Grisham served in the Trump White House for all
four years, first in the office of First Lady Milania
Trump and then as one of the president's closest aides.
It was a dream come true for her, but by
the end it was the kind of dream you wake
up from in a cold sweat. By the time she
resigned on January sixth, twenty twenty one, she was ready
(19:55):
to get as far away from Washington, d C.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
As possible.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Stephanie Grisham, former White House Communications Director, picked the middle
of fucking nowhere to move after she left the Trump administration.
I'm using her words.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
By the way, not mine.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Stephanie was President Trump and the first Lady's spinmaster, and
an unapologetic one. So why isn't she doing something today
like leading comms for Trump's social media platform, truth Social,
or firing off press releases from mar A Lago says.
Speaker 7 (20:35):
I'm three minutes away. It doesn't feel like I'm three
minutes away from anything. I'm still in the middle of Cornfield.
So got a gas station, Tom's welding. There appears to
be one stoplight.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
I decided that finding out an answer to that question
was worth taking two planes and driving four and a
half hours to ask her myself. I'll do like hash
browns and one egg.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
I only need one egg.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
How would you like to take over easy.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
No toast her anything that, okay, I'll take a feoff.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
If you had told me this back in twenty nineteen,
that I'd be sitting at a place called Burger's in
Beer in Plainville with Stephanie and her sister, I would
have said probably not. That was the year I published
my book A Warning, Still as anonymous. When the book
came out, it was essentially Stephanie's job to go after
(21:43):
anyone who was critical of the president, and I thought
she did it with a disturbing amount of zeal.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
Whoever wrote the anonymous book is a coward all across government,
the President has been saying, and I think it's been
proven time and again there are obstructionists all across this
government who are working against the president.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
That clip from Fox and Friends was pretty typical. Stephanie
certainly sounds like a true believer, and she was. She
had been with President Trump since the start of the campaign.
When she first saw him do his thing on the
rally circuit.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
Watching him speak like I was mesmerized. I was not
mesmerized necessarily by him, but the people in the audience
were just into it and the cheers, and they really
liked him, and I had never seen such a crowd.
I really hadn't, and I had done all these Romney rallies,
and so at that moment, I was like, I'm in.
(22:39):
I'm sticking with him. This is fun.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Stephanie was living in Arizona and had worked on Mitt
Romney's presidential campaign. She was then spokesperson for Arizona's Attorney
General Tom Horne and the Republican Caucus in the state House.
She joins Trump's team as a presaide. It's like nothing
she's ever seen before.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
We were doing like five events a day or something,
and this one day we were running so behind, and
our last event of the day was in a fucking
like a barn somewhere in like Appalachia, and we were
literally three hours late. So by the time we got
to this barn, I think it was like one in
the morning, and we walked in and the place was packed.
(23:24):
People were on the floor sleeping, And I walked in
and I was like, my god, like, this is a movement.
This is not normal. And that's when I knew. I
was like, he's going to win.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Washington insiders, the media, they didn't see it until election
night and the press.
Speaker 6 (23:41):
Was like what what? And the mood started to take.
It just took this turn. You could feel it in
the room. There was just this like, oh my gosh,
did we just do this?
Speaker 4 (23:56):
The Trump campaign team entering the White House can't help
but feel defiant, ready to prove wrong all the critics
who ever doubted them.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
I think our mindset was like, you all told us
we were terrible, y'all, you know, made fun of us,
And now here we are and fuck y'all.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Right away, Stephanie is folded into the transition team and
it's a heady time, Like I said, a dream come true.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
One day, Sean Spicer called he was going to be
Press secretary, and he asked if I would be a
deputy press secretary, which had always been like a dream
of mine. I even kept a picture of the White
House in my office all the time, everywhere I worked
to remind myself of my goal. So when he offered
me deputy press secretary, I was like, yes, Oh my gosh.
I watched West Wing. I was convinced I'd be ce J. Craig.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Lots of girls probably wanted to be CJ. Craig. The
White House Press secretary played by the incomparable Alison Janny
on NBC's The West Wing. I mean, nobody could tell
it like it is like her.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
Trouble with your spen is that we're not going to
get anywhere putting on a calm face.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
We need to pick a fight. Why because in politics,
if you're not on offense, you're on defense.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
I'd be like fifty and funny at the podium. You know,
I've had a goldfish and data reporter secretly, like I
knew i'd be.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Heart turns out being deputy Press secretary under Sean Spicer
is not actually like being CJ. Craig at all. In
the first press briefing, Spicer at the behest of the
new president, lies about the crowd size at the inauguration
and is humiliated all over cable news and Spicy, as
(25:35):
he was called on SNL, is too focused on not
making Trump angry to develop much of a working relationship
with his deputy.
Speaker 6 (25:42):
I was not in any meetings. He literally had me
taking the press in and out of the oval, in
and out of the cabinet room. Trump really liked me always.
He'd see me come in, he'd call me over, he'd
ask me who was being nice, you know, he'd ask
me how things are playing. I was like, oh my god, goosh,
here I am with this awesome job title, but I'm
(26:04):
not doing anything.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
But nine months in she gets a different opportunity. She's
tapped by the East Wing of the White House to
be chief of Staff and Press Secretary for First Lady
Milania Trump.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
It was like nirvana. We came in at like eight
thirty nine, whereas before I'd be in the West Wing
at seven am, roll out of there at four thirty.
Everyone was beautiful and dressed so beautiful.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Throughout the next two years working for the First Lady,
Stephanie is shielded from most of the insanity. The travel band,
Charlottesville family separation, the Michael Cohen controversy, the list goes
on and on. She's fully aware of what's happening. But
in the East Wing, your job is to protect the
First Lady, to put out statements about her initiatives and
(26:50):
make her look good.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
When you're working. Then in the East Wing, people including
the press, are like more forgiving of you. Well you
work for Milania, Well, okay. She puts out statements kind
of against her own husband. She is not four kids
in cages as it was talked about. I think that
I had gotten in a place that again, we were
(27:12):
very confident, cocky. It was terrible with how much power
we had because Trump just always wanted to keep Malania happy.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
But in June of twenty nineteen, then Press Secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders resigns and Trump decides that, in addition to
still working with Milania, Stephanie should replace Sanders and take
on the role of White House Communications Director, so she's
back in the belly of the beast. And then some I.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Had such reservations about taking the Press secretary job, and
my gut kept telling me, don't do it, don't do it.
I just knew it would be bad, but I also
was like, this is my dream. I will be able
to say I reached my goal my whole life, this
is what I wanted to do. You know, every other
politician now hate you because you work for Trump, so
(28:03):
you're never going to probably be at the White House again.
I would still work for missus Trump was because I
was so against working just for him, and I thought
that she would keep me protected and that I would
be able to call her when he wanted to do
real crazy stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Magical thinking was just the norm in this White House.
Speaker 6 (28:23):
One word comes to mind, it's just pathetic. And I
would just remind Mitt Romney that he is not president.
It's hard for me to actually hear the word Republican
and Mitt Romney in the same sentence.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
That's Stephanie on Fox Business bashing her former boss Mitt
Romney for not falling in line during Trump's first impeachment.
This is her job now, and here she is on
Fox and Friends running down the White House press pool
while defending her decision not to hold press briefings.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
He's his own best spokesperson, It's true. And also he's
the most accessible president in history. And to be honest,
the briefings had become a lot of theater, and I
think that a lot of or were doing it.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
To get famous.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
I mean, yeah, they're writing books now. I mean they're
all getting famous off of this presidency.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
When my former boss, General John Kelly left the administration
and made the mistake of saying something critical about the president,
he got the Stephanie treatment too. She told CNN quote,
I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped
to handle the genius of our great president unquote. Yeah,
(29:28):
it sounds like something out of Pyongyang, North Korea, not Washington.
Stephanie transforms herself into a voracious defender of President Trump.
She spins for him, blocks the media from talking to him,
and attacks anyone who questions his agenda. But behind closed doors,
she's starting to find that the job is hell.
Speaker 6 (29:49):
I immediately started to regret it right when I got there,
because it's so stupid, because you knew of all the
chaos going on. You read the stories of everybody you
know biting each other in the back and snipe in
each other. And but then you got in there and
you saw it. And I had Jared constantly overriding me.
I had people maneuvering, I had Peter Navarro bothering me
(30:13):
every other day. I'm seeing his anger.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
More and more Trump's anger. That is because she spends
a lot of time with him.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
I started taking anti anxiety drugs when I went back
to the West Wing pretty darn quick. So I would
wake up, I would watch the news, I would be
on Twitter, and then he would come down, and from
that moment on, my day was done. Like it was
like I had to be in the oval or in
the dining room. I wasn't getting any work done. I
was just watching TV with him.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
It's all consuming.
Speaker 6 (30:44):
You just have to be there to like make him
happy and tell him how great he was all day.
And then the weekends. He would call me every weekend,
and I remember every weekend being so uptight waiting for
his morning call, and the minute the operator call, I
would be on Twitter and like frantically looking at Twitter
while I'm waiting to be connected so that I could
(31:06):
know what was happening. The anxiety was though on those weekends,
which trump are you gonna get? Some mornings it was like, hey, darling, Hey,
how are you? How's the plane okay? And some days
it would be like what the fuck?
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Where the fuck are people?
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Why aren't you on tevinge screaming at you?
Speaker 4 (31:28):
This is plenty bad on its own, but for Stephanie,
it also dredges up old feelings.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
Going back to some of my childhood stuff that I
don't really talk about. But I dealt with a lot
of abuse from a man when I was growing up,
and I think that that kind of triggered me. I
had no idea, but I've taken had a lot of
therapy since the White House.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Stephanie's experience is different from a lot of other people
we've talked to for this show. It's not the policies
Trump has enacted or the administration's efforts to skirt the law.
These are not the things that change her mind. It's
the man himself. She gets to know Donald Trump in
a way that few people do, and she's terrified by
(32:10):
what she sees.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
It is a cycle of abuse because his anger is
so swift and so severe and so mean. I feel
like a snowflake saying that he's mean. It's not it's cruel.
All you do is you want to make that version
of that monster go away. And that's what abuse is. Right,
(32:35):
It was awful, and so my anxiety got really bad,
really really bad.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
But despite all of that, she stays in the job,
attacking the president's enemies and promoting his talking points.
Speaker 6 (32:50):
You don't want to admit to the people who told you,
don't do this, he's bad or whatever. That's the other
part of it, your pride. You're still like, oh, I
don't want to tell. So that's the part of like,
it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
So when does it become not fine?
Speaker 6 (33:05):
When it really started to turn, and not for the
reason you would think. I know, I'm supposed to say
COVID started to turn because we weren't. We fucked it up,
which we did. When Meadows came in and Mick and
his team left, you know, things went really downhill for me.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
In March of twenty twenty, Mark Meadows replaces Mick mulvaney
as White House Chief of Staff, and Meadows has no
qualms about placating the president's every need and inclination, no
matter how bad, and he's more than willing to throw
people under the bus.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
Suddenly, for the first time ever, I was getting bad
press stories leaked about me. I went back to the
East Wing. And that's actually when I started commuting here
to Plainville. I was so far removed from the election,
I really was, and I was already like, I'm done
at the end of this. I had already made that
that was my plan. People all think that I would
still have stayed. Fuck no, No, I was done. I
(34:03):
knew I would never go back. I was a mess.
I came here and I was a mess. When the
whole stop the steal was happening, I was just like,
of course, that's what we're doing. Like at that point,
I was so jaded. I was only loyal to Missus Trump.
I was staying for her, and that is all I
cared about. Everything else. I did my best to like
(34:24):
either drink away or just ignore, because at that point
my mental health was really suffering, really bad.
Speaker 8 (34:34):
All of us here today do not want to see
our election victory stolen by a bald and radical left Democrats,
which is what they're doing, and stolen by the fake
news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing.
We will never give up. We will never concede. It
doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft could go.
Speaker 6 (34:57):
I had a bad feeling just because it was the
and he was so angry and stuff. But I certainly
didn't know what was going to happen. And I remember
I had the TV on and I was listening to
him at the rally, and I remember being like, dude, like,
why are you why are you needlessly doing this? This
is so not healthy for the country. And then when
(35:26):
everything started to happen at the Capitol, I sent Missus
Trump a text and said, do you want to put
a statement out? Basically saying like you have the right
to protest, but it needs to be peaceful. It was
not political at all. It was truly just a hey, everybody,
let's calm down and be peaceful. And she just wrote back, No,
(35:46):
that's it.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
The first lady does what her husband does best.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
Now she has said she had no idea what was
happening and that it's my fault because I didn't brief
her as her chief of staff, which is just bullshit,
Like she knew everything that was going on all the time.
There was always a TV on. I think it just
all came to a crash. To see it so vividly,
I think it felt like I was watching my own
self burn down.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
She's one of the leading staffers in the administration who
resigns That very day I resigned.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
I sent her an email like five ten minutes later,
and I resigned, and I ce Seed, a senior advisor
of her, so that I couldn't take it back. She
sent me a really nice text that said, you know,
I'm sorry to get your email. I value your friendship.
And she has never spoken to me again.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Stephanie moves to Plainville permanently, but it's not really over
for her.
Speaker 6 (36:51):
I felt so safe here that that was nice, but
I still was like riddle with anxiety. But then when
I decided to go forward with the book, I thought
it would just be more therapy for me than anything
like write it down. I processed a lot of feelings
and like I remembered a lot of stuff where I
(37:12):
was like, well, that was fucked up of me, And
I realized that I too was pretty fucked up a
lot of the times. And so that's when I decided,
you know, I'm not going to like just blame everybody else,
you know, and be a victim. I'm going to also
own kind of my part in it.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Stephanie's book I'll Take Your Questions Now is one of
the first books published from a true MAGA insider who
defected from the movement, and she doesn't hold back. She
shares damaging revelations, but also, unlike some others from the
administration who wrote books in the aftermath, she doesn't shy
away from her own role. Predictably, the MAGA crowd goes
(37:50):
after her. Did you know before it went live, did
you have a sense of the whole force of the
MAGA side that's going to cut after me?
Speaker 9 (38:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (38:01):
Because I used to do it to people. One thing
we were really good at was destroying people who went
against us, and I was part of them, so I
knew I was prepared. I did it to people myself.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
She also appears before the January sixth Committee. On MSNBC,
host Nicole Wallace recounts Stephanie's testimony about Trump's behavior during
the insurrection.
Speaker 10 (38:27):
He was sitting in the dining room and he was
just watching it all unfold.
Speaker 6 (38:32):
Some of his comments were.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
That these people looked very trashy, but also look at
what fighters they were.
Speaker 6 (38:39):
He loved how they were fighting for him.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
The media is kind of skeptical about all of this.
Joy Behar on the View summed it up for a
lot of people.
Speaker 10 (38:48):
These people who are now all like recovering addicts, recovering
ADATs in the Trump world that come on even on
this show, They come on this show, they go on
on the shows, and they suddenly turning on Trump.
Speaker 6 (39:01):
Where were you all.
Speaker 10 (39:02):
That time when he was talking about grabbing women. It's
just disgraceful. We're onto all of them.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
I just feel like I am a person who has complete, inside,
intimate knowledge of this man, his psyche, the things that
motivate him, I've seen it, and I just feel like
I have a responsibility to educate people about who he is.
I want people to know who he is behind the scenes.
(39:31):
So I just, yeah, I feel a responsibility, I think
because it will be so much worse if he gets
in there again, so much worse.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Power couple Peter Baker and Susan Glasser were two of
the many journalists who were stonewalled by Trump's press operation.
I asked them what they thought about Stephanie's journey.
Speaker 11 (39:53):
There are no heroes in this story, and Stephanie Grisham
is an example. Arguably her Her police in White House
history will be as the White House prosecutor who never
gave a single press conference. Not exactly a badge of honor,
a badge of glory. And yet there's this interesting argument,
is it ever too late to do the right thing?
Speaker 9 (40:16):
She was there for three and a half years, not
complaining at least publicly about anything, and then at the
end breaks with him. And yet I think by breaking
with him and then trying to explore it and understand
herself and how she did this in her book, and
to then bear witness in effect of what she saw,
you know, she's a very human story. There's something rather
(40:38):
remarkable about that to try to rethink your life, to
rethink your choices, and to say I did something that
I'm not proud of anymore, and I'm willing to say
it out loud.
Speaker 11 (40:48):
It strikes me that Grisham, who then also produced a
memoir and went public with her concerns, including some very
very damaging stories to both Trump and Milania Trump, that
she is an example that people should study of, Like,
how is it that those who didn't have any particular
(41:10):
ideological reason to do so, you know, didn't even particularly
like Donald Trump, gets sucked into doing something so wrong.
Speaker 9 (41:21):
The dissenter of the Republican Party have in fact been
consigned to the furthest reaches of American politics, if they're
even in American politics anymore.
Speaker 11 (41:30):
That is the story writ large of the Trump presidency
is a story of his domination, not over the country.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
He was never.
Speaker 11 (41:41):
Supported by fifty one percent of Americans on any day
in his presidency, and yet his domination of the Republican
Party was remarkable. In purging dissenters, in marginalizing them, in
demonizing them. He has an innate understanding, an instinctual understanding
that the threat from within was always the potentially the
(42:03):
biggest one, and so that was always the kind of
apostasy that he needed to punish the most, that of
somebody like Stephanie Grisham.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
The party has closed ranks around this idea, discouraging anyone
who dissents from the status quo from a political future,
and they're also making sure to leave the outliers to
fend for themselves when they come under attack. The message
is basically, you're on your own. When I went to
see Denver for his interview, he was under just such
(42:33):
an attack. He had just learned he was being sued
by a far right paramilitary group for fifty million dollars.
The group was incensed after Denver published his book The Breach,
about his work returning to Capitol Hill as a staffer
on the January sixth Select Committee. He was part of
the team investigating groups responsible for the attack on the Capitol.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Crazy has so much more energy than sanity. And that's
the thing is that saying people somewhere need to find
the energy, you know, to match that type of crazy
or that type of zealotry you know that's coming from certain.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
Groups such battles don't give Denver any appetite to return
to politics.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
I would rather light myself on fire than run for
office again. I've never seen such depravity. I think Congress
is a disease right now. And the fact that the
people that are going in there are the people that
will do anything for power, and the talented people, the
ones you want in public service are looking over there,
(43:36):
like do I want to swim in that sewer?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Hell no.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Stephanie doesn't want any part of the sewer either, but
the sewer often comes to her.
Speaker 6 (43:45):
They're suing me. They still try to shop stories. So
I definitely had moments of like, should I do this?
Like all my family's going to see all this terrible
stuff about me?
Speaker 5 (43:54):
Now?
Speaker 6 (43:55):
Is my family going to be ashamed of me? Or
you know, my kid's going to get threatened.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Still, while they may be out of the Washington game,
both Stephanie and Denver see some value, even power in
talking about their experience on a local level, Like when
someone comes in for a bourbon at Denver's distillery.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
The people that come in here, I don't get angry.
Just in my place. You're on my turf, so I
can be kind and loving and we can have really
good discussions here, and that one on one is how
I get people. Me going on a CNNMSNBC, Fox, BBC
doesn't turn anybody. Nobody gives a shit. Does me going
on a show? Change one person?
Speaker 5 (44:40):
Now?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Now? Not one person?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
And I'm like, God, if I could just get with
them and have a beer or a bourbon, I know
I can turn them. There you go.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
So that's strength.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Or over Bloody Mary's at burgers and beer.
Speaker 6 (44:55):
I feel a responsibility. It's and that's the thing. It's
not fun. I'm not trying to be relevant. You just
get shit on from both sides. It's you know, you
should have spoken out sooner, you should have done this,
you should have done that, and keep and I think
that's the hard part. And that's what I'm trying to
figure out a way to do, is explain to people
(45:16):
the consequences. I feel like my ultimate weapon is the
truth now and me being authentic and being like, yeah,
that happened.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
When we started this series, I was wrestling with my
own issues around whistleblowing, namely whether I came forward soon
enough and whether doing it anonymously was actually the right choice.
I'm not gonna lie. It was painful to relive that experience.
Coming forward cost me a lot, a home, a job,
(45:58):
close relationships, the security of my immediate family. I struggled
with depression and substance abuse, something that I really never
thought would happen, and I definitely didn't think I would
be talking about publicly. I don't say this for sympathy,
but because what surprised me most about the conversations we
had making this show was that just about every one
(46:20):
of the people you've heard this season went through something similar.
They were called liars, traders, attention seekers, deep state hacks.
Their careers suffered, their lives have been upended, all because
they felt they had to say something. When I was
in college, I took econ one O one, and you
(46:40):
hear a lot about supply and demand. If the price
of something is too high, there are basically two ways
to lower it. You can decrease the demand or you
can increase the supply. Now, when it comes to people
speaking out, we need there to be demand, a demand
for the truth. So if you want to lower the
(47:01):
price people have to pay for stepping up and giving
us that truth, we have to increase the supply. When
more people are willing to say something about wrongdoing, the price,
the consequence for them, it has to come down. But
there's something else about the stories we heard making this
show something I personally find pretty inspiring, and that's the
(47:25):
fact that almost no one we spoke to regrets what
they did. They might have done it another way, but
they're pretty clear that it needed to be done and
it had to be them, whatever the price, and that
gives me some much needed optimism. The Whistleblowers is a
(48:04):
production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best Case Studios
and ARC Media. It was hosted by me Miles Taylor
and written by me Isabel Evans and Adam Pinkiss. Isabel
Evans is also our producer. Associate producers are Hannah Leebelwitz Lockhart,
and Ashley Warren. Darcy Peacle is consulting producer. Zach Herman
is the VP of Development of ARC Media. This episode
(48:25):
was edited by Daniel Turreck with assistants from Max Michael Miller.
Original music is by James Newberry. Executive producers are Me
Miles Taylor, Adam Pinkis for Best Case Studios and Barrick
Goodman for ARC Media. Beth Ann Macaluso is our executive
producer for iHeartMedia, along with Ali Perry. Special thanks to
Kevin Famm, all of our contributors and interviewees, and our
(48:46):
intern Anna Levitt, and a big thanks to the teams
at Government Accountability Project and Whistleblower Aid, two of the
best organizations for government and private sector whistleblowers seeking legal support.
Follow and rate the Whistleblowers on the podcast site of
your choice to hear what these whistleblowers and others have
to say about what they believe will happen under a
(49:06):
second Trump administration or in the White House of AMaGA successor,
you can pick up my new book, Blowback from Simon
and Schuster
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