Trump accused of ogling ‘highly attractive’ press assistant’s body on Air Force One, Grisham’s book claims

Former president reportedly insisted the staffer be promoted and put on television to ‘keep her happy’

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claims she kept a pretty young staffer away from Donald Trump after he summoned her to his cabin on Air Force One to “look at her a**”.

While the former president reportedly became "obsessed" with the "highly attractive" press assistant, Ms Grisham says in her new book that she was too “chicken s***” to tell Melania Trump.

The claims were made in Ms Grisham’s upcoming book I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw In The White House, preview copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post and The New York Times ahead of its commercial release on 5 October.

Mr Trump’s “unusual interest” in the woman included insisting the staffer be "put on TV. Keep her happy, promote her”, Ms Grisham said.

A source who has seen the new book said Ms Grisham came close to telling the first lady about the ex-president’s behaviour but ultimately decided it wasn’t her “place or business”, according to The Daily Mail.

“I thought that if she would say one little word to him about it, she could make it stop. But I could never bring myself to say anything,” she wrote.

Ms Grisham, who also worked as communications director in the East Wing, says Ms Trump may still not be aware of that behaviour. But the first lady has regardless found her own ways to rebel, excluding her husband from photos and tweets during his presidency.

She also went out of her way to arrive at events with a handsome military aide hanging onto her arm, while also disbelieving denials of an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.

“Oh, please, are you kidding me?” Ms Trump said, according to Ms Grisham. “I don’t believe any of that,”

In multiple statements, Mr Trump said Ms Grisham’s "untrue" claims were the result of a disgruntled employee who didn’t "have what it takes" after a break-up, in an apparent reference to her split with another White House official, Max Miller.

“She became very angry and bitter after her break up and as time went on she was seldom relied upon, or even thought about. She had big problems and we felt that she should work out those problems for herself,” Mr Trump said.

“Now, like everyone else, she gets paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”

His spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, added that "recently published photos raise serious questions about her conduct and judgement", seemingly about photos of the former press secretary on the floor of the White House with her legs up in the air on election night 2020.

“Publishers should be ashamed of themselves for preying on desperate people who see the short term gain in writing a book full of falsehoods,” Ms Harrington said.

Air Force One is a recurring character in Ms Grisham’s memoir. It’s where Mr Trump felt compelled to deny claims that his appendage was shaped like the mushroom character from Mario Kart, the memoir claims.

The former president called Ms Grisham to assure her that his penis was, in fact, neither small nor bore a resemblance to a cartoon fungus.

“Uh, yes sir,” Ms Grisham replied.

The disputed description was first alleged by Ms Daniels, who claimed she had a 2007 affair with Mr Trump in her own tell-all memoir Full Disclosure, released in 2018.

She said that Mr Trump had a "smaller than average", but not "freakishly small", penis and that that it was unusually shaped.

“I lay there, annoyed that I was getting f***ed by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart,” Ms Daniels said.

"He knows he has an unusual penis," Ms Daniels added. "It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool."

She later regretted thrusting Mr Trump’s privates into the public’s consciousness, saying it amounted to "body shaming".

As Ms Grisham’s book continues to generate headlines, more could be on the horizon after the American Arbitration Association on Monday released its decision in a long-running arbitration battle between Mr Trump and former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman.

They ruled that Trump’s nondisclosure agreement is unenforceable. That means she’s free to speak freely about what happened in the White House. And her lawyer, John M Phillips, hinted that is exactly what could come next.

"People who signed these NDAs should sleep better and speak more freely," he told Law & Crime.

About an hour after calling Ms Grisham “bitter and angry”, Mr Trump turned his focus onto the former Apprentice contestant who released her own tell-all book, Unhinged.

“I gave Omarosa three attempts at The Apprentice and she failed. At her desperate request, I gave her an attempt at the White House and she failed there too, people truly hated her. At least now I don’t have to let her fail anymore," Mr Trump said in a statement.

"Nobody in her life has done more for Omarosa than a man named Donald Trump. Unfortunately, like certain others, she forgot all about that – which is fine with me!”