First lady Melania Trump announced Tuesday that her communications director, Stephanie Grisham, will now serve as White House press secretary, replacing Sarah Sanders, who is leaving at the end of the month.
Grisham is set to become the third White House press secretary under President Donald Trump, following Sanders and Sean Spicer, who held the job for part of 2017. Sanders' last day on the job is Friday.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that he had offered Grisham the position earlier that morning, praising her as "talented" and adding that "the first lady loves her."
Grisham is stepping into the job at a time when the White House has seemingly halted formal press briefings. As of Tuesday, it's been 106 days since the last briefing on March 11. That briefing was only the second to take place in 2019.
At this point last year, the White House held 44 press briefings.
Grisham joined Trump's campaign in 2015 and is one of the few remaining aides who served on the president's campaign still working in the White House.
"During the campaign, she developed a good relationship with the president, and that carried through," Sanders told The Washington Post last year of Grisham.
"She has developed a great amount of trust from both the president and the first lady, which is a pretty high commodity here," Sanders added. "There aren't a lot of people who have a lot of regular interaction with both of them."
She garnered attention for her statements and op-eds written in defense of the first lady and her family, often taking shots at those who seemed to cross the Trumps.
Before joining Trump's campaign, Grisham was a low-level operative on 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's campaign.
Grisham will travel with Trump this week to the G-20 summit in Japan. She will continue to work with the first lady's office for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time until she transitions out.
