Because White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has never held an official White House press briefing, she has rarely been subjected to the satirical ridicule her predecessors in the Trump administration endured.
But that changed on Monday night when The Daily Show host Trevor Noah zeroed in on remarks Grisham made on Fox News—the only major news outlet she will visit—about President Trump’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas.
“After Parnas claimed that he worked for Trump to get dirt on Joe Biden, Trump repeatedly claimed he had no idea who this man is,” Noah explained. “And that’s even though they’ve appeared in more photos together than Mariah Carey and Christmas trees.”
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So who’s lying? Well, as Noah put it, Parnas “has the receipts.”
The host was referring to newly released audio that Parnas secretly taped at a 2018 fundraising dinner in which the president can be heard saying of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, “Take her out.”
In response, Grisham told Fox, “The president sits at many, many dinners, at many, many roundtables with people that he does not know.”
“Yes, the president has many, many dinners. Sometimes all on the same night,” Noah joked. “C’mon, guys, I’m sorry. You just can’t keep pretending that Trump doesn’t know this guy.”
The host could understand Trump not remembering everyone he takes photos with, but not remembering the people he has “private dinners” with seemed like too much of a stretch. “What’s next?” he asked. “They’re going to be like, ‘Look the president gets matching quid pro quo tattoos with a lot of people! He can’t be expected to remember all of them!’”
