Comedian Dave Chappelle is sort of spilling the beans on a White House mystery.
As some may remember, in 2019 the White House press secretary accused aides of President Barack Obama of leaving mean notes behind in White House offices for the staff of incoming President Donald Trump to find when the new administration took over. Now Chappelle is saying — perhaps tongue in cheek — that that’s not exactly what took place.
During a guest appearance on the YouTube series “No Filter” with host and supermodel Naomi Campbell, which was released on Tuesday, April 6, the pair reflected on Chappelle’s popularity. They highlighted how much the police in Washington, D.C., loved the “Half Baked” star. That soon prompted Chappelle to recount a story where he visited the White House and how the Secret Service was even more accommodating.
The 47-year-old said it all went down when he misplaced his ID just before attending one of the final parties the Obama administration threw at the White House. Still, the actor said Secret Service was like, “We know who you are,” and they allowed him to walk right in. He claims it was at that party he saw some celebrities leaving “dirty notes” for the incoming Trump administration.
“Remember when the Trump administration moved in, they said ‘the Obama staff left dirty notes for us in all the drawers and all the cabinets,’” the comedian explained. “Now, I saw this happening. I’m not going to say who did it. But it was celebrities, writing all this crazy sh-t and putting them all over there. And I saw them doing it, so when I saw it on the news, I laughed real hard.” Chappelle did not say what was on the notes.
The controversy began in November 2019 when CNN reporter Abby D. Phillip shared a post on Twitter stating that then-White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham accused the aides of leaving behind taunting messages for the incoming staff. She added, “We came into the WH, I’ll tell you something. Every office was filled with Obama books and we had notes left behind that said ‘you will fail,’ ‘you aren’t going to make it.’”
The accusations came in a radio interview — Grisham famously never held a press briefing during her nine months in the job — and former Obama aides strongly denied the accusations, calling them “outrageous.” Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice described them as a “bald-faced lie.”
Grisham — who perhaps was using the radio interview to deflect from the impeachment storm gathering around Trump at that time — later clarified to NBC News that the supposed dirty notes were left only in a White House press area.
