“We weren’t powerful, but we were respected; George W. Bush used to call out ‘I love Stenos!’ whenever he saw my boss, Peggy, or her colleagues,” she wrote. “Our job, after all, was to provide a first line of defense against the press by being present whenever a reporter was in the same room as the President.”<doc-sep>A White House stenographer says she resigned over the Trump administration's lack of respect for her office after President Trump Donald TrumpTrump lashes out after grand jury seated for New York criminal probe Schumer tees up vote on Jan. 6 commission bill Senators struggle to save Jan. 6 commission MORE reduced the roles of the White House position. Beck Dorey-Stein, who worked as a stenographer for the White House during the second half of the Obama administration, told CNN's New Day on Wednesday that Trump's refusal to allow stenographers in the room for meetings and interviews with some journalists crossed a line. ADVERTISEMENT "I quit because I couldn't be proud of where I worked anymore," Dorey-Stein said. "I felt like President Trump was lying to the American people, and also ... not even trying to tell the truth. He wasn't even going the extra mile to have the stenographers in the room" "I quit because I couldn't be proud of where I worked anymore," says Beck Dorey-Stein, former WH stenographer: "I felt like President Trump was lying to the American people ... he wasn't even going the extra mile to have the stenographers in the room" https://t.co/EpVE8bwNwZ — New Day (@NewDay) July 18, 2018 In an op-ed for The New York Times, Dorey-Stein added that Trump's dislike for microphones "near his face" resulted in her office having less access to the Oval Office, in many cases resulting in no stenographer being present for press conferences or meetings. "In my five years with President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWarren urges Biden to replace Fed's Quarles in testy exchange Content of Biden's agenda trumps Republican complaints about process Obama to join social media event on vaccines next week MORE, off-the-record discussions with reporters happened after work hours — not for an hour in the middle of the work day, and certainly not before an interview," she said, speaking of Trump's off-the-record conversation with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. "Mr. Trump likes to call anyone who disagrees with him 'fake news.' But if he’s really the victim of so much inaccurate reporting, why is he so averse to having the facts recorded and transcribed?" Dorey-Stein chalked up Trump's hesitation to utilize the stenographer's office to his administration's unwillingness to adequately learn about the position during the transition period last year, as well as the Trump team's lack of contact with Obama staffers during the move. "Perhaps he didn’t fully understand the role of the stenographer. That would make sense, since his administration had rebuffed every invitation from the Obama transition team during an inherently stressful time, including to learn how to keep the lights on," she wrote. Trump was heavily criticized in British media after he gave an interview last week to the tabloid The Sun during his four-day stay in the United Kingdom, an interview that Trump later criticized as "fake news" after his remarks aimed at British Prime Minister Theresa May were widely reported. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later clarified his remarks in a statement to The Hill. “As he said in his interview with the Sun [May] ‘is a very good person’ and he ‘never said anything bad about her,’” Sanders said in a statement to The Hill. “He thought she was great on NATO today and is a really terrific person." “He is thankful for the wonderful welcome from the Prime Minister here in the U.K.”<doc-sep>A former White House stenographer on Wednesday offered new details into why she resigned from the post, saying she felt President Donald Trump was "not even trying to tell the truth" to the American public. Beck Dorey-Stein began as a White House stenographer in 2012 under the Obama administration, and resigned just months after Trump took office. "I quit because I couldn't be proud of where I worked anymore," she told CNN's "New Day." "I was so proud to serve under the Obama administration, and I felt like president Trump was lying to the American people and also not even trying to tell the truth—he wasn't even going the extra mile to have the stenographers in the room," she said. Breaking with precedent, she said the Trump White House office often "didn't include us [stenographers] in his meetings with the press." The president, "we quickly learned, does not like microphones near his face." SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox. She said she'd "never seen anything" like what happened before Trump's interview with Bill O'Reilly in 2017 when Trump spent an hour with the former Fox News host in private ahead of their interview. "In my five years with President Barack Obama, off-the-record discussions with reporters happened after work hours—not for an hour in the middle of the work day, and certainly not before an interview," she wrote in an op-ed at the New York Times. "When a president spoke on the record with a reporter, his staff made sure to have a stenographer present so there could be an official White House transcript, just in case the reporter came out with an inaccurate quotation." "If President Trump was really interested in fighting 'fake news,' he would have a stenographer present and also would have that transcript ready to go and say, '...We have the transcript, we can just refer to this,'" she said, also pointed to a recent interview Trump gave with British tabloid The Sun which he dubbed "fake news." "Mr. Trump likes to call anyone who disagrees with him 'fake news,'" she wrote at the Times. "But if he's really the victim of so much inaccurate reporting, why is he so averse to having the facts recorded and transcribed?" "It's clear that White House stenographers do not serve his administration, but rather his adversary: the truth," she concluded. Watch her interview on CNN below:<doc-sep>
Beck Dorey-Stein, who served as a White House stenographer under both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, has written an editorial for the New York Times in which she describes Trump's strange aversion to having people write down exactly what he says. To start, she explains why most presidents of both parties have traditionally welcomed stenographers as a way to protect them from being inaccurately quoted. "We weren't powerful, but we were respected; George W. Bush used to call out, 'I love the stenos!' whenever he saw my boss, Peggy, or her colleagues," she writes. "Our job, after all, was to provide a first line of defense against the press by being present whenever a reporter was in the same room as the president." However, she says all that changed when Trump entered the White House. In particular, she notes that the Trump White House excluded stenographers entirely from Trump's infamous 2017 interview with Lester Holt in which the president admitted that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he decided to fire former FBI Director James Comey. She also says that former Trump aide Hope Hicks broke off an interview the president was conducting with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly to move the two men for a private off-the-record discussion in the Oval Office -- again with no stenographers present. "Mr. Trump likes to call anyone who disagrees with him 'fake news,'" she concludes. "But if he’s really the victim of so much inaccurate reporting, why is he so averse to having the facts recorded and transcribed? It’s clear that White House stenographers do not serve his administration, but rather his adversary: the truth." Read the whole editorial here.