Melania Trump’s spokeswoman is launching a full-scale defense of the first lady following an op-ed bashing her for hosting a “pity party” over negative media coverage of her White House tenure.
In a “Fox & Friends” interview Monday, Stephanie Grisham responded to last week’s CNN editorial by network contributor Kate Andersen Brower, who claimed Trump “doesn’t understand what it means to be first lady.”
“First of all, she just got her facts wrong,” Grisham said of Brower, adding that “the timing of the op-ed was particularly offensive.”
The spokeswoman then recited a list of the first lady’s recent outings and work trips, which included participating in a toy drive, visiting military bases and reading to children at a D.C.-area hospital.
“These days, the consistent negative coverage that Mrs. Trump gets, it’s not fair.”
- Stephanie Grisham
Grisham then decried bad press that sometimes surrounds her boss, arguing that many inquiries she receives as a spokeswoman “have nothing to do with the substance of her work.”
“These days, the consistent negative coverage that Mrs. Trump gets, it’s not fair. And I know I’m going to be attacked for saying it’s not fair, that I’m whining, but we’re defending ourselves.”
Brower’s Thursday column ripped into Trump’s recent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in which the first lady accused journalists and others of being “opportunists” and using the president’s name to boost their careers, citing that as the single hardest thing about her position.
That, Brower contended, was Trump’s way of “again making the job about herself and her family instead of taking the opportunity to talk about the challenges she sees other people facing.”
“All modern first ladies can relate to being frustrated with the press over their preoccupation with superficial things, including the way they cut their hair or what they choose to wear, but Melania has clouded the profound responsibility and honor of the position with her own personal resentment,” Brower wrote.
Grisham spoke out in a CNN editorial of her own the same day rebuking Brower. She doubled down on her response with her Fox News appearance.
“I think that what she has shown is that she’s not going to be deterred, she’s going to do what she thinks is right,” Grisham said of Trump. “She’s going to stay true to herself, but despite the negative criticism, despite the perception that perhaps the media is trying to put out there, she’s going to continue to go out there and work on ‘Be Best’ and do what’s right for kids.”