Stephanie Grisham says Trump will run for president in 2024 and believes he'll hire 'people of the Jan. 6 mind'

• On NBC's "Meet the Press," Stephanie Grisham said that she believes Trump will run for president in 2024.
• Grisham said that the former president will feel empowered to hire "people of the Jan. 6 mind."

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Sunday said that she believes former President Donald Trump will run for his old job in 2024 and hire "people of the January 6 mind."

During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Grisham told host Chuck Todd that she was initially skeptical of another presidential bid by the former president.

"At first, I really didn't think he'd run again," she said. "I honestly thought this was a lot of his bluster, which he's good at doing. He was doubling down. He'll never admit to losing. I thought he was going to just kind of raise some money so he could pay off legal bills."

She added: "I think now, because his base is reacting to him the way that it is, and polls are showing that he's very much the leader of the Republican Party ... but also on this current attack on democracy with regard to election integrity, I think he is going to run again. That's why I'm speaking out the way that I am."

Grisham, who was former first lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and press secretary at the time of her resignation on Jan. 6, recently released a tell-all memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," which chronicles her time in the Trump White House.

In the interview with Todd, Grisham laid out her case of why the former president should not return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

"I don't want him to run again," she said. "I think people aren't remembering that if he does run again in 2024, he'll have no guardrails because he'll never have to worry about reelection, so he will do whatever he wants."

She emphasized: "He will hire whomever he wants, and I think that includes people of the January 6 mind."

Grisham went on to reference an earlier segment of the program that featured Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, where Todd and the lawmaker spoke of Trump's election pressure on the Department of Justice.

"Earlier, your guest [Whitehouse] was talking about the DOJ and it being weaponized," she said. "Imagine who he [Trump] could put into the DOJ in 2024 knowing he's got no consequences there."

Grisham, who moved to Kansas at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year and traveled back and forth from Washington, DC, until she left the White House over the administration's response to the Jan. 6 riot, recently told New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi that she was skeptical of a possible "rebrand" due to her old ties to the Trumps.

"I don't think I can rebrand. I think this will follow me forever," Grisham said of her time in the White House. "I believe that I was part of something unusually evil, and I hope that it was a one-time lesson for our country and that I can be a part of making sure that at least that evil doesn't come back now."

Grisham, who said in a recent CNN interview that she didn't vote for Trump in the 2020 election, warned that a new Trump White House term would be defined by "revenge."

During an interview with Insider last Friday, Grisham said that she struggled with anxiety and had to be "deprogrammed" after her resignation.