By the time Trump became the Republican nominee, she said, “you’re in it, and you’ve been on this journey for a year with the same people, and, yes, a bunker mentality has set in. For people like me — and I’m not proud of this — you have a sick sense of pride. All the people who told you how terrible he was? You’re like, Oh? He’s the nominee, buddy! I’m not proud of that. And then he wins, and you get into the White House, and you’re in the White House.” She raised her eyebrows in an expression of awe. “I thought that they were the only ones who would ever get me there,” she said. “My lack of confidence in myself as a single mother and someone who has made mistakes in my past, I thought, Well, this is my only shot. Nobody’s gonna ever want me, really, but these people did. So I’ll stick around.”

Being inside the White House, she said, brought out the worst in her. “You’re catered to and you do feel important and you do become power hungry. If people say they don’t love the powerful feeling in there, they’re lying. It’s kind of gross. I’m not saying something nice about myself right now. I was so proud that I was surviving over everyone else, and I had such a complex that I hadn’t been let into the inner circle in the beginning, so once I was there, I took a lot of joy out of it. You get into this bubble of behavior and you lose track of the outside world. You lose track of real life.”…

Early Saturday morning, Grisham and her sister brought me to the Hays Regional Airport, where we boarded a flight to Denver. From there, they were off to La Guardia and more media interviews. “I don’t think I can rebrand. I think this will follow me forever,” Grisham said. “I believe that I was part of something unusually evil, and I hope that it was a one-time lesson for our country and that I can be a part of making sure that at least that evil doesn’t come back now.” For the next week, Grisham would be explaining and apologizing and seeking understanding. But she wasn’t asking for redemption.