Farah Griffin: Trump talked about executing people at several White House meetings

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin said former President Trump talked about executing people multiple times at White House meetings.

Farah Griffin joined Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin to discuss her time in the Trump administration and what she thinks a second Trump term could look like.

McLaughlin asked Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View,” why she thinks several powerful Republicans, like former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Attorney General Bill Barr, are backing Trump despite knowing the destruction he could cause.

“It’s power,” she responded. “I think … power’s just one of the most enticing things we have in society.”

Farah Griffin noted an April interview Barr did with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, where she asked the former attorney general if he remembered when the former president said the person who leaked information about him going into a bunker during the 2020 George Floyd protests should be executed.

Barr said he remembers that the former president was “very mad about that.” He said he couldn’t remember if Trump specifically called for someone to be executed but “wouldn’t dispute it,” although he doubts it would have actually been carried out.

Farah Griffin said she was there during that meeting and that Trump “straight up said a staffer who leaked the story should be executed.”

“But there were others, where he talked about executing people,” she said.

“And I’m like, how [do] you rationalize that that is a person fit, in sound judgment to be president of the United States?” Farah Griffin continued.

She argued that Haley, Barr and other Republicans who were once critical of Trump but now have come to support his presidential campaign against President Biden are “reading the tea leaves.”

“They know there’s a very real chance he’s going to be president again, and there’s not a lot of glory or like, victory in being right, but being on the wrong side of Trump,” she said. “I think that’s ultimately what it comes down to.”

Farah Griffin said she really wanted to root for Haley but thought it was “pathetic” that she endorsed Trump in mid-May after suspending her own bid for president. She knows better than to do that, Farah Griffin said.

She continued, noting that nearly every Republican that has been on a presidential ticket, besides former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and presumably former President George Bush, has denounced Trump.

“Everyone that we entrusted, who has risen to the level of seriousness that they could see themselves in the Oval [Office] says, ‘Oh, no, no, this guy should not be in the Oval Office,’” she said.

The former president’s campaign responded to Farah Griffin’s remarks, accusing her of lying about her experiences working under the Trump administration. 

“Alyssa Farrah is so thirsty for attention she’ll lie about her time in the White House to overstate her role and importance,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in an emailed statement to The Hill. “She should be answering questions about her role at the infamous Bombay Club debacle instead.”

Updated on June 17 at 8:05 a.m. EDT