Donald and Melania Trump 'unleashed' on Stephanie Grisham for not bringing press inside a hospital to cover healthcare workers cheering for them, book says

• Stephanie Grisham's new book describes Donald Trump berating her during his presidency.
• She wrote Trump was angry the press didn't document his visit to a hospital after a mass shooting.
• Grisham, who was then White House press secretary, said Melania Trump joined in the criticism.

The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham wrote in her new book that then-President Donald Trump berated after she was unable to bring members of the press into a hospital to document his meeting with mass-shooting victims.

The president and Melania Trump, then the first lady, visited an intensive-care unit in Ohio after a shooting in Dayton that killed nine people and injured over two dozen in August 2019.

Grisham wrote in the new book, obtained by Insider before its release, that Trump wanted her to invite the press to "capture all of the medical staff clapping and cheering for them and taking selfies" but that she said they weren't allowed to because of patients' privacy and concerns over keeping the "environment as sterile as possible."

But Trump dismissed Grisham's reasoning and grew angry, she wrote. As the trip went on, she added, the former president repeatedly brought up the issue, telling Grisham: "I can't believe you didn't have them-meaning the press-in the hospital. What a waste."

Later that day, when Trump saw local Democratic politicians criticizing his visit in a press conference, he erupted at Grisham, she wrote.

"The president turned to me and, for the first time since I had met the man, totally unleashed on me," Grisham wrote. "His eyes were fixed and filled with anger. His face had passed red and was turning almost purple."

She wrote that Trump went on to yell at her in front of other staffers as they departed Ohio on Air Force One. "Where the hell are our people?" she quoted him as saying. "Why are those two on TV right now and there is no one to defend me? Why are you even on this plane? What do I have a whole team of people for if there is no one fucking defending me? And I am stuck on this fucking airplane and can't do anything!"

Grisham wrote that Melania Trump also piled on the criticism. "There should have been press at that first stop," the book says the first lady told her. "That would've been better. It didn't look good."

Grisham, who served on the 2016 Trump campaign and in a series of senior White House roles in both the East and West wings, detailed the scene in her forthcoming tell-all memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," which is set for release Tuesday.

Both Trumps have condemned Grisham amid news of her memoir, which paints a scathing portrait of a dishonest and incompetent White House.

"Stephanie didn't have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning," the former president told The New York Times in a statement last week. Melania Trump's office called Grisham a "deceitful and troubled individual" trying to "rehabilitate" her reputation "by manipulating and distorting the truth about Mrs. Trump."