On the day President Obama moved out of the White House, his staffers left copies of books by Obama in “every” White House office with...
On the day President Obama moved out of the White House, his staffers left copies of books by Obama in “every” White House office with notes that read, “You will fail,” President Trump’s press secretary said Tuesday.
“We came into the White House, I’ll tell you something. Every office was filled with Obama books, and we had notes left behind that said, ‘You will fail,’ ‘You aren’t going to make it,’” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told a Norfolk, Virginia, radio station, according to The Daily Mail.
“And in the press office, there was a big note taped to a door that said, ‘You will fail,'” Grisham said. “And they had filled, they had filled the—” she said before breaking off.
She told DailyMail.com after the broadcast that Obama aides had left cabinets in the press office ‘filled’ with books by President Obama. And one particular ‘You will fail’ note, she said, was taped to the inside of one of those cabinet doors.Former former West Wing aides, all of whom came to the White House at the beginning of the Trump administration, told DailyMail.com after the broadcast first created a buzz on Twitter that they recalled hearing about it on day one.‘It was a mess that first week,’ one recalled Tuesday. ‘Yeah, there were mean notes left in odd places. One in a deputy press secretary’s office, one inside a desk drawer in upper press, another on a bathroom mirror. They were all about how we were doomed to failure.’
But some former Obama staffers said on Twitter that it didn’t happen.
“This is another bald faced lie,” former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice wrote.
This is another bald faced lie. https://t.co/E1U9KtdL77— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) November 19, 2019
Chris Lu, who served as Obama’s Cabinet secretary, asked why no one in the Trump administration mentioned it for three years.
“This is absolutely not true,” he wrote. “Obama repeatedly and publicly praised Bush cooperation during 2009 transition, and pledged we would provide same cooperation to whoever followed us. And that’s what we did. If Grisham is correct, why has it taken 3 years to come out?”This is absolutely not true.— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) November 19, 2019
Obama repeatedly and publicly praised Bush cooperation during 2009 transition, and pledged we would provide same cooperation to whoever followed us. And that’s what we did.
If Grisham is correct, why has it taken 3 years to come out? https://t.co/QpN4JAGxhq
“Amid the flurry of pushback from Obama aides, Grisham clarified her comment to note she was referring specifically to the lower press office,” The Hill reported.
“In fact, I had a lovely note left for me in the East Wing, and I tracked the woman down and thanked her,” she said in a statement to The Hill. “I was talking specifically about our experience in the lower press office — nowhere else.”“I don’t know why everyone is so sensitive!” Grisham added. “At the time we saw it as kind of a prank, and something that always happened. We were so busy trying to learn where the bathrooms were and how to turn on the lights, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Pranks have been common during transitions. In addition to taking W keys off keyboards, staffers of Bill Clinton pulled other shenanigans before George W. Bush moved in.
“Scatter bumper stickers. Record obscene voice-mail greetings. Damage furniture. White-out computer keyboards. Smear Vaseline over desks. Unplug refrigerators. Write on walls. Take cellphones, TV remotes or presidential medallions. Glue telephones or drawers. Abandon holiday decorations. Smash locks. Clinton’s team did all of this, and at Congress’s request, the scene was meticulously reconstructed through nearly 200 after-action interviews,” the Washington Post wrote.
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