needing to see me. when i would write to him, he d completely ignore me. it wasn t a good relationship. did you ever tell the president you wanted to do a press conference. no. i never said, i want to go do a press conference. when we talked about me taking the job, he said to me, i don t want any more press conferences. he stopped it six months before with sarah. he said, we re still not going to do press conferences. i m talking to the press. i ll be the p.t. barnum of everybody. he really wanted me to work on print papers and behind the scenes talking to people one-on-one. did you ever want to do a press conference? well, selfishly, in this administration, i didn t. i knew i would possibly be put in a position to stand at that podium and not be honest. lie. and lie. i didn t want to do that. working in the white house had always been my dream. it was my dream to stand behind the podium and do it the traditional way. but in our administration, i selfishly, i didn t wa
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.
it. mm-hmm. but you were also there during covid. mm-hmm. in this totality, do you think your enabling cost lives? i do. i think the way we handled covid was tragic. i think that the president s vanity got in the way. he was working for his base. he was not working for this country. he, you know, didn t wear a mask quickly enough. now, this isn t or hardly ever. correct. and this isn t an excuse, but i also worked for mrs. trump. i was so proud because she was out there doing psas and wearing a mask and trying to push it. naive as this is, i kept hoping she would convince her husband, you know, please get out there, donald. get out there. but, yes, again, i was part of that. i don t think i ll ever forgive myself with respect to covid. i don t think i can ever redeem
and give general kelly more attention? you don t want that. that was something you could say to donald trump, if he thinks others would get more attention, maybe we could it didn t work. he wanted it out there. i sat down. i was on my bed. it was the weekend. i called a couple of friends and said, this sounds nuts, right? they both said yes. but i, at the time, felt i was his spokesperson. he told me to do it. i knew he was probably watching tv waiting for it. i put it out. it is one of my biggest regrets, and i apologize to general and mrs. kelly in the book about it. those were not your words? i do not speak that way, no. not your belief. not my belief. it s a lie. yes. you put it out. that s an example i had. what would have happened if you hadn t put it out? i think he would have yelled, screamed, told me i was weak. at that point, i just i had reached this pinnacle. i had reached my dream of being press secretary, which sadly i regretted the moment i kind
is the leader of the republican party. i think that everybody, despite january 6th, despite constantly pushing these election lies, they still are, like, loyal to donald trump. as long as you stay on his good side, you know, that s all that matters. it s scary to me. i personally right now am on this little island alone, but i think that s what it is right now. people are scared of him. he s a bully. people are afraid of him. i m just hoping, i m just hoping that at some point, people will kind of break out of this spell, if it is, and see what s really going on. mike pence i really respect. he is a good man of faith. he is very principled, so i was saddened to see that he did that last night. you don t think they really just sort of talked through this, worked it out, do you? no. i think that at some point, this is just me guessing, but knowing donald trump the way i do, i am