A newly-released memoir from a former White House aide claims Melania Trump’s office terminated a gay staffer after finding his Grindr account during a security screening.
Business Insider reports that former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham learned that an unnamed staffer within the Trump administration was allegedly let go in 2018 after officials discovered he was on the LGBTQ dating app Grindr. In the book, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw in the Trump White House,” Grisham sheds light on her experiences and the issues others faced during the Trump era.
“Whoever determined security clearances had come across his Grindr account and decided that some of the stuff on it would be ‘personally embarrassing’ to Mrs. Trump,” wrote Grisham in her book.
Following this issue during the security process, Grisham wrote that an individual from human resources and an “armed Secret Service agent” escorted the LGBTQ staffer out of the building without a “second thought.”
While it is still unclear who made the call to fire the staffer, Grisham suggests it may have been Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly.
“To this day, I don’t know if the decision went all the way up to General Kelly, although he was the type of guy who liked top-to-bottom control, so it was certainly possible,” Grisham wrote. “I do know that one of Kelly’s deputies was well aware of what had happened and supported the decision, something that enraged me on many levels.”
Grisham further ripped the incident as profoundly ironic and homophobic given the not-so-squeaky-clean records of former White House staff.
“If the person had truly been removed solely because he was gay and had a lively Grindr account, that was wrong. This was a White House filled with adulterers,” she wrote. “I had a DUI, and they let me stay.”
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