Hey, good morning, Playbookers. I'm Rugu Mono-Voland. It's Monday, September 13th. This is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

On 125 p.m. on January 6th, soon after writers had broken through barricades outside of the Capitol,

Melania Trump received a text message from her then chief of staff, Stephanie

Grisham. It had a question, do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every

American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence? A minute later, Melania replied

with a one-word answer. No. At that moment, Melania was at the White House preparing for a photo shoot

of a rug she had selected. That's according to exclusive excerpts of Grisham's forthcoming book

obtained by Politico, titled, I'll take your questions now what I saw in the Trump White House.

Grisham, the former Trump White House press secretary best known for never holding a press briefing, is now breaking her silence.

And Politico's Daniel Lippman emailed us with a preview.

Grisham also writes that she asked Melania a couple times whether she should reach out to Jill Biden

during the transition to set up the traditional inauguration tea.

But instead of setting up the meeting, Melania told her that they

should, quote, see what the West Wing does. According to Grisham, the reason was because

Melania, like her husband, believed the election was illegitimate. On January 11th, Melania

did issue a statement saying that she was, quote, disappointed and disheartened with what happened

the last week. But she added that she found it, quote, disappointed and disheartened with what happened the last week.

But she added that she found it, quote, shameful that surrounding these tragic events,

there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations

on me from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda.

She seemed to be referring to her former close personal friend,

Stephanie Winston Wolkhov, who penned an op-ed in The Daily Beast a few days earlier,

...