Ivanka Trump Was Behind This Infamous Donald Trump Speech, According To An Ex-Press Secretary
In a primetime Oval Office address on March 11, 2020, Donald Trump announced to the nation that he would suspend all travel from Europe to the United States for 30 days, per Rolling Stone. The statement created mass panic as Americans clogged Europe's airports in desperate attempts to return home before the ban became reality. In addition, the speech seemed haphazard and had numerous contradictions, as pointed out by news outlets. Critics blamed Trump at the time. Now, the former Trump White House communications director Stephanie Grisham claims it was actually Ivanka Trump's fault.
In her new memoir titled "I'll Take Your Questions Now," Grisham said that Ivanka pushed for Trump to give an Oval Office address on the coronavirus pandemic before his administration was ready for him to do so. Members of the Coronavirus Task Force held a meeting on that fateful day to discuss COVID-19 with Trump, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka were in attendance.
"In the middle of all the discussion, Ivanka kept chiming in, 'But I think there should probably be an address to the nation tonight,'" Grisham wrote. "I let that pass because in my mind there was no way we could pull one off with no speech prepared, no communications strategy, no consensus on anything we had just started discussing, and only a few hours' notice. We did a lot of random things in Trump World, but that just seemed too crazy even for us" (via Vanity Fair).
Jared Kushner wrote Trump's Oval Office Address
Stephanie Grisham not only blamed Ivanka Trump for the idea of an Oval Office address, but also blamed Jared Kushner for writing it. As she explained in her memoir, Kushner wrote the address mere hours before Trump had to deliver it, per Rolling Stone.
"After he wrote the speech, there was no time for fact-checking, vetting, or notifying friends and allies on the Hill or abroad," Grisham wrote. "There was hardly any time for the president to read it and make changes to it. It was a total clusterf*** from start to finish because Ivanka and her crew wanted her father to be on TV" (via Vanity Fair).
The lack of time and preparation led to huge flaws in the speech, according to Grisham. "The speech that night contained a number of misstatements and sloppy wording — some caused by the president stumbling over a few phrases — that sowed confusion about such things as which countries would be affected by the new travel restrictions and if international trade would be banned," she wrote.
Grisham also expressed her annoyance that Ivanka and Jared left the mess to the communications staff. "Of course, it was our problem, not Jared's or Ivanka's or Hope's," she said. "No, they were in the dining room off of the Oval Office, Trump's usual hangout, congratulating themselves and telling the president how awesome he was."