President Obama’s aides taunted the incoming Trump administration in 2017 by leaving notes around the White House that said, “You will fail,” 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, Va., radio station during an interview.
Three former Trump aides confirmed Grisham’s claim to the Daily Mail, the Web site said.
She added that cabinets in the press office also were “filled” with books by Obama, who has written three tomes, and inside one of the drawers was another “You will fail” note.
Three former West Wing officials confirmed Grisham’s claim to the Mail, the website said.
“It was a mess that first week,” an ex-aide said of the Trump transition. “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
Another source said, “Those notes definitely happened. They even left us Russian vodka in the cabinet.
“They were trolling us from the minute we got there. It was definitely just ridiculous. We were trying to find the bathroom, and we get these notes saying ‘You will fail,’ and ‘You’re not going to make it.’ ”
But Susan Rice, who was Obama’s US ambassador to the UN, tweeted that the claim “was another bald-faced lie” by the Trump administration.
A former Obama senior director of the National Security Council, Jon Wolfsthal, also called the claim “an outright lie’‘ — and said Grisham should be fired over it.
Ex-Obama aide Rudy Mehrbani tweeted that he did a final sweep of a floor in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as the old administration headed out the door and saw nary an issue.
“@PressSec is absolutely lying,” he tweeted. “My team occupied almost an entire hallway of offices in the EEOB. Before I turned off the lights on Jan. 19, I did a walk-thru of every one of them to make sure all federal records (or other notes) were appropriately archived.”
Grisham responded to the ex-Obama aides’ pushback by insisting in an e-mailed statement to The Post and other outlets, “I’m not sure where their offices were and certainly wasn’t implying every office had that issue.
“In fact, I had a lovely note left for me in the East Wing, and I tracked the woman down and thanked her,” the press secretary wrote. “I was talking specifically (and honestly) about our experience in the lower press office — nowhere else. I don’t know why everyone is so sensitive!
“At the time we saw it as a 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.”
“The books were inside the cabinets of lower press [staffers], as was one of the notes, which was taped inside,” she said. “I believe others have come out saying this was true. Either way – this shouldn’t be a big deal, I was telling an anecdotal story in response to a question about when we first took office.”
When the Clinton administration left the West Wing in 2001, junior staffers famously removed the “W” key from their computers before heading out. The incoming commander-in-chief was George W. Bush, who was differentiated from his ex-president dad, George H.W. Bush, by the “W.”
When the younger Bush’s administration left the White House to make way for Obama’s people, the transition was hailed at the time as a model of propriety and cooperation.
The Trump staffers’ claims about a bush-league transition by Obama officials also drew skepticism from some reporters on the beat at the time.
ABC News’ chief White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, tweeted that he was present as Trump officials were moving into their White House offices on Jan. 20, 2017 — and that he saw no Obama books or any notes.
No Trump officials complained that they had found any, either, wrote Karl — who added photos of some of the relatively bare offices at the time.
“I was in the West Wing on the evening of January 20, 2017, talking to several incoming Trump officials as they moved into their offices. I saw no offices ‘filled with Obama books’ and nobody mentioned ‘you will fail’ notes. Here are photos I took at the WH that night,” Karl tweeted.
https://nypost.com/2019/11/19/obama-aides-allegedly-left-you-will-fail-notes-for-trump-white-house-staffers/
