Trump's ex-press team reveals how they browbeat surrogates to spread his message

Matthew Chapman
June 4, 2024 


Donald Trump after being found guilty of all 34 felony counts in a fraud case in New York. (Justin Lane-Pool/Getty Images)

Former Trump administration communications officials Alyssa Farah Griffin and Stephanie Grisham spilled the beans on how their former boss operates in a new article for CNN this week.

This comes as former President Donald Trump faces the new reality of being convicted of 34 felonies in New York — and tries to use everything in his playbook to make it go away.

"Many viewers who turned to right-wing media outlets like Fox News and Newsmax were given exceptionally coordinated spin that the conviction was, in fact, a massive boon to Trump," they wrote, noting that Trump's allies in Congress are working overtime to spread the same message.


"According to right-wing talking points, the president’s trial was rigged — it was a witch hunt orchestrated by an activist Democrat prosecutor at President Joe Biden’s behest. But the truth is, the case was heard by a grand jury of average Americans who decided to pursue it. The guilty verdicts against Trump were rendered after a trial by a jury of 12 of Trump’s peers."

"We both spent considerable amounts of time in our careers running the communications operation in Trump’s White House," they wrote. "We were well-versed in crafting talking points that would resonate with the public, and in pressing Trump’s allies and surrogates to parrot them to the media. We were experts, as well, in briefing lawmakers on exactly what they needed to say to support Trump, with the goal of creating a very loud, unified narrative within the GOP.

"We both know the very real limitations of the rightwing media messaging machine — and the often-flagrant dishonesty of Donald Trump."

Trump's narrative, they wrote, frightens Republican leaders into toeing the line, and it galvanizes his hardcore believers into action — but it isn't going to work on regular voters who aren't in that universe. "Voters are simply not that gullible" to fall for the idea Trump is a "victim" and everyone conspired against him, they said — a reality borne out by at least some focus grouping.

At the end of the day, they concluded, "Trump’s messaging since the verdict has been about little more than rage and retribution. And we all remember how that worked out for him in 2020."