Donald Trump Was Reportedly Behind Melania's Snub of Inviting Jill Biden to the White House for Tea

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After Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, the transition of power was supposed to begin. If anyone remembers that time, Donald Trump made it very difficult for the incoming administration to get their jobs done, and he’s reportedly the reason why former First Lady Melania Trump didn’t uphold the tradition of welcoming the incoming First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, to the White House.

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It was Melania’s former aide Stephanie Grisham, author of I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House, who revealed the details to the Jan. 6 House select committee. The White House “tea and tour” had been a tradition since 1952 when Bess Truman invited Mamie Eisenhower to get a look at the place she would be calling home before she moved in. It’s been honored by every succeeding first lady until Melania broke the tradition. “I was trying to gently say to her — because, again, so often she did things no matter — independent of her husband, and she did what she felt was right. So I was trying to gently say, maybe we reach out and do this anyway,” Grisham told the committee in her testimony.

It was the first time she had ever heard Melania say that they “need to be on the same page with West Wing.” It was especially shocking for Grisham, who had started her White House career as the press secretary because she had been encouraged by the First Lady to “relinquish [her] ties with the West Wing” when she became Melania’s personal aide. “We’re going to do our own thing. We aren’t going to worry about them,” the former White House adviser claimed. “We are going to do what I want, what I feel is right, and what they say doesn’t matter.”

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Grisham noted that her confident attitude changed about two to three weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. It was a shocking turn of events for Melania’s aide because she felt like Donald Trump was suddenly shaping her actions. “She started to say, like, something’s not right here, and let’s listen to the West Wing,” Grisham said. “And she had started to, in my opinion, drink somebody’s Kool-Aid that perhaps this election was stolen.” That drastically different point of view is why Jill never got the opportunity to tour her new home with Melania, but we somehow think she will gracefully revive the tradition whenever the time comes for a new administration.

Before you go, click here to see our favorite photos of President Joe Biden’s big family.

Launch Gallery: See Donald Trump, Ivana Trump, & More of the Trump Family in This Photo Album

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