Aides in the Obama administration left notes for incoming Trump administration aides including some that read “you will fail,” according to White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Grisham told a radio host about the story during an interview on Nov. 19.
“We came into the White House. I‘ll tell you something, every office was filled with Obama books and we had notes left behind that said ’you will fail,‘ ’you aren’t going to make it,'” Grisham said.
“And in the press office, there was a big note taped to a door that said, ‘You will fail.’”
Some Obama administration officials denied the claim, including former National Security Advisor Susan Rice. “This is a bald faced lie,” Rice wrote in a statement on Twitter.
“I actually left an iPhone charger if anybody’s seen it, but no, nobody left unimaginative notes written at a sixth-grade level,” added Cody Keenan, a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama.
“It was a mess that first week,” one said. “Yeah, there were mean notes left in odd places. One in a deputy press secretary’s office, one inside a desk drawer in upper press, another on a bathroom mirror. They were all about how we were doomed to failure.”
“Those notes definitely happened. They even left us Russian vodka in the cabinet,” another remembered. “They were trolling us from the minute we got there. It was definitely just ridiculous. We were trying to find the bathroom, and we get these notes saying ‘You will fail,’ and ‘You’re not going to make it.’”
Daily Mail reporter Martasko said it wasn’t the first time he heard about the messages.
“A WH aide told me about it two months after Trump’s inauguration, but I couldn’t confirm. Now, apparently, it’s on the record,” he said in a Twitter post.
