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i have all these press people. nobody gets me any good coverage. weak was it. ineffective was it. why can't you do things? i don't care what you're saying right now. that doesn't make sense. that's bull -- >> we're cable. it's okay. >> and other words i will not say. a lot of cursing would happen. that type of thing. >> he'd curse at you. >> mm-hmm. >> how would it end? how would that resolve itself, if at all? would he walk off? would you leave? >> i would leave. i would leave, and then i personally would stay hidden for a little while. then you'd see him again and it was like nothing ever happened. i think that was part of the weird thing. you'd walk into a room, if i would get summoned, and i didn't know who i was going to meet. there is a donald trump that's very funny and can be very kind and, you know, you think he is listening to you. and then there's the one i was just talking about. >> you talk a lot about
that. i think that he likes to control people's thoughts that way. he views these people as fighters and fighting for him, and then he just covers it up with words like patriots. they're not patriots. they're out there destroying our country. the book, you know, i left d.c., and the last six months of the white house for me were difficult. i resigned on january 6th, as you guys know, and i went way far away to middle america. it took me some time to almost decompress or, you know, be deprogrammed. i had a lot of time to reflect. while i was doing that, you know, i was watching from afar. i was no longer in that bubble of the white house clearly or washington, d.c. the fact that he is pushing this election lie is scary to me. and the fact he is the front runner right now for if he were to run for office. that is scary.
myself. >> again, this -- you weren't a short timer. you were a lifer. >> yeah. >> the number of choices that you made over five or six years, it's immeasurable. >> uh-huh. >> i mean, it's hard to say, oh, i just realized now, after six years, that this was all a really bad idea. >> yup. >> a deadly, in some cases, bad idea. >> i have had a lot of time to think about that. again, not an excuse, but i worked on the east wing side of the house for 2 1/2 years of that. so, again, naive as it may sound, i was really kind of blocked off from the west wing. in the west wing, everybody wanted to keep the east wing happy. so i didn't see a lot of the decisions being made or the toxic culture. and i was programmed at that time, that when his tweets would go out, people were too insensitive. it didn't matter.
experience was like is they don't trust her because she admitted in that interview that she was not truthful, she said she probably wasn't during the few interviews that she did do when she was press secretary. she talked about how she turned her head to a lot of things that were happening inside the trump west wing and i think that people will see that and they will say, why should i believe what she is saying now? and i think the other thing that could be true while also that being true is that she is talking about things that did happen inside the white house that other white house aides have not said publicly and they will not put their name next to, she is saying in this book, talking about the things -- the concerns she has about what a second trump term could look like. and it is not just talking about trump in the past, it is also talking about what could be a very real thing in the future, which is that trump is the republican front-runner as we are speaking right now for a potential run in 2024. and i think one thing that was really revealing was what she was saying about what staffing in a second trump white house could look like, talking about the sydney powells, the rudy
adviser. i had been trying to resign, actually, for the past six, seven months, and she'd always talked me out of it. you know, asked me to stay strong. i actually had a resignation letter in a folder with no date for the last four months of the administration, that i just wanted to hand over if necessary. it was that bad for me. >> you talk over and over about botched attempts to leave. >> correct. >> you talk about the abusive environment. look, there's a lot of -- you mentioned this idea of destroying people. you say in your book that you were a destroyer. you were on the other side of this. >> mm-hmm. >> you do talk a lot about this in very clear terms, that you think this was an abusive environment. >> mm-hmm. >> i wonder -- and you also talk about having a background in that. so knowing that that mirrors some of your past experiences as well. can you tell us more about that and what it took to recover from that, if you have? >> i haven't yet. yes, i think, you know, when i
you know how to put out a release. >> yes. >> you could say the president is potentially harassing a junior staffer. >> right. >> i know that's a big thing to do. >> yes. >> it is a possibility. you could have done it. >> it is. i could have done that with a lot of things. >> what? >> well, a lot of the things he would say. when he'd go out and do his press conferences about covid and downplaythingthings. i could have left when charlottesville happened. there are so many times i could have done that, and i didn't. i'm still grappling with that. i am. >> you say you hate mark meadows. you wouldn't have gone to him in the case of this press aide or anything else. >> no. >> tell us why you hate mark meadows. >> when he began, i was in quarantine for three weeks with potentially having covid because i had been exposed to bolsonaro's press person at mar-a-lago. he was calling all the time, asking me about my staff. i was explaining to him how
because -- and i know this sounds silly because i know what his tweets were like. i know a lot of the vitriol for all four years -- but something seemed heightened. he was heightened. he was so, you know, about this was stolen from us. this was stolen from us. he was so hyperfocused on that. i don't want to say to a crazy level, but i felt like we were getting there. i knew that the big rally was being planned, and i had a bad, bad feeling. it was going to be right outside the white house. look, we had that all the time. black lives matter protesters. i just, in my gut, felt weird. and then when he said, "let's head to the capitol. we need to be fighters." these people, like i used to be, are true believers in him and are true loyalists. i believe they take stuff like that very literally. if president trump is saying, "you are my people. we're in this together.
got there. he just would have yelled and screamed. i don't know. maybe he would have fired me immediately. i'm not sure what he would have done. >> what was the role of fox news in the white house? >> that's a great question. that's just where we went to get what we wanted out. you know, i looked forward to going and doing lou dobbs. he'd do all the talking about how great everything was, and i would nod and say yes. they, you know, by and large, didn't get tough with us. they just took what we were s saying and disseminated it. i think they're disseminating it to a lot of people who went to the capitol for january 6th. again, i've had a lot of time too grapple with this, and i feel horribly guilty about my part in it because i was on fox a lot. >> was it, to you, like state-run tv for donald trump? >> you know, a bit. i think there are some
that she was my friend and, you know, i made the mistake of kind of thinking she would confide in me certain things. but it's very calculated with her. she and her husband are a lot more alike than i think people want to believe. she can be very, very kind, and then she can also be very, very cold. >> and very stubborn. i think that was the line you drew between her and the president. >> so stubborn, yes. >> tell us about election night. she was asleep. it is an interesting scene that you paint in the book. take us through this. >> sure. she and i had been, that morning, in florida at mar-a-lago because she went to vote. so we had gotten up very, very early and had been working late in the evening. we went to vote. we flew back to the white house where we stayed. it was her house. but i stayed there until the night of the election party. i think what happened is she went upstairs to take a cat nap or something pause she was probably tired.
talk about the abusive nature, while i believe some colleagues are probably saying, yes, this is true, i am only speaking for me here. yes, i have a past that included childhood and afterwards some ab abuse. it took me a really long time to realize it was a culture of abuse in there. you just want to keep donald trump happy. you just don't want him to yell at you. you just -- you know, you learn you have to give him the answer he wants or he'll just throw you out anyway. so a lot of people would learn to work around that a little bit and say, yes, your poll numbers are huge, sir, but perhaps we just take it down, you know, a notch on this, that, or the other subject. we worked around him. i also don't want to use that as an excuse. i'm also a grown woman, and i knew what was happening in there. i turned my head to a lot of things. >> did you ever tell him no? >> yes, yes.