Donald Trump.Photo: Steven Ferdman/WireImage
Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham seems to have finally, publicly unraveled the mystery surrounding a secretive trip then-PresidentDonald Trumptook to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November 2019.
While theories and rumors abounded over the sudden hospital visit — suggesting that Trump, now 75, had suffered a stroke or another serious medical complication — Grisham, 45, suggests the true reason for the visit was far more pedestrian: a colonoscopy.
What’s more, Grisham writes, he didn’t want to cede any authority, even temporarily, to Vice PresidentMike Pence.
Politicoreports thatmultiple former officials confirmed a colonoscopywas indeedthe reason for Trump’s unannounced visit to the medical center, which had piqued the curiosity of the political press at the time.
The secrecy surrounding the trip fueled coverage of it, with CNNreportingit “did not follow the protocol of a routine … exam” andABC Newsnoting the trip had not previously been on the president’s public schedule.
At the time, the White House said Trump was at Walter Reed only for “a quick exam and labs” in order to get started on his annual physical, with Grisham herself dismissing what she called “conspiracy theories” about the hospital trip.
As Grisham writes in her book now, Trump opted not to go under anesthesia for the procedure, because he did not want Pence to take over the country, if only briefly.
The president’s doctor said in 2019 that he didn’t have “any specialized cardiac or neurological evaluations,” in response to rumors that Trump had suffered from strokes.
Trump himself shot back at such claims during his 2020 run for reelection.
“It never ends! Now they are trying to say that your favorite President, me, went to Walter Reed Medical Center, having suffered a series of mini-strokes,” he tweeted in 2020, before his account waspermanently suspendedafter the Capitol riots. “Never happened to THIS candidate - FAKE NEWS.”
Stephanie Grisham.Alex Wong/Getty Images
“I’m not going to go tit-for-tat with everything that people are going to say I misremembered or was wrong about,” Grisham, who hasnow acknowledged lyingin her job, told PEOPLE in an interview this week.
“I write in the beginning of the book that these are my memories to the best of my recollection,” Grisham said. “It’s because I never planned to write a book, I don’t have notes and journals and wasn’t being sneaky. But I think, which I’ve said all along, is that they don’t like this message so they’re trying to discredit the messenger.”
“This book is for the public to read,” she continued, “and they can believe, look and decide for themselves if I’ve been honest.”
source: people.com
