Ex-Trump Aide Reveals How He Threatened To Execute His Own Staff Member – HuffPost
Overnight Editor, HuffPost
“The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as White House communications director under Donald Trump, said he once threatened to have a member of his own staff executed.
“Right before I resigned, I was in an Oval Office meeting with a dozen other staffers, and somebody had, he thinks, leaked a story about him going to the bunker during the George Floyd protests,” she said on Tuesday’s broadcast. “And he said, ‘Whoever did that should be executed.’”
Trump was rushed to a bunker as protests erupted near the White House over relentless cases of police brutality against Black victims that too often result in deaths, including the May, 25, 2020, police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis.
When word got out of the bunker move, Trump insisted he was only “inspecting” the bunker, a claim that was widely mocked.
The anecdote on “The View” confirms an incident first reported by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender in his 2021 book, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election.”
“Trump boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it. It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president,” Bender wrote.
“Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!” Trump reportedly yelled. “They should be executed!”
A spokesperson for Trump at the time denied that he wanted the staffer executed.
But as Farah Griffin noted on “The View” on Tuesday, Trump has made similar threats publicly. Earlier this year, Trump suggested that Gen. Mark Milley ― who at the time was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ― should be executed.
See more of her discussion below:
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