Former White House Stenographer Speaks Out: 'Trump Was Lying To The American People'

Beck Dorey-Stein told CNN that Trump doesn’t like using stenographers because he doesn’t care about the truth.
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A former White House stenographer said Wednesday that she resigned because President Donald Trump was “lying to the American people.”

The stenographer, Beck Dorey-Stein, joined the White House in 2012 during Barack Obama’s presidency. But she “couldn’t be proud” of working in the White House under Trump, she told CNN on Wednesday, and resigned in early 2017.

“I was so proud to serve under the Obama administration,” Dorey-Stein said. “And I felt like President Trump was lying to the American people and not even trying ... to tell the truth.”

As a stenographer, she was tasked with providing an accurate transcript of conversations involving the president. She described her position as the “first line of defense against the press” by making sure the president wasn’t misquoted.

“From President Reagan through President Obama, the White House really utilized stenographers to make sure there was a record of everything the president said to the press,” she said, adding that Obama would often tell the press to “check the transcript” to understand the context of his comments.

But Dorey-Stein said that strategy was scrapped when Trump took office.

“President Trump, we quickly learned, does not like microphones near his face, which is difficult because as a stenographer, we often had to do that,” she said. “His White House and his press office often didn’t include us in meetings with the press ... Even if there is a stenographer present, he doesn’t often say, ‘Check the transcript,’ because the transcript will reveal the truth.”

A White House representative did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

In an op-ed published Tuesday in The New York Times, Dorey-Stein illustrated the importance of stenographers by pointing to an incident last week in which Trump denied ever criticizing British Prime Minister Theresa May. His claim was proven false when a recording of the conversation surfaced.

“Mr. Trump likes to call anyone who disagrees with him ‘fake news,’” she wrote in the Times. “But if he’s really the victim of so much inaccurate reporting, why is he so averse to having the facts recorded and transcribed?”

“It’s clear that White House stenographers do not serve his administration, but rather his adversary: the truth,” Dorey-Stein wrote.

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