When former President Donald Trump first moved into the White House in January 2017, his staffers said they found nasty notes stuffed into the drawers and cabinets — a claim President Barack Obama’s aides fiercely denied.
But comedian Dave Chappelle now says the notes did exist — but were penned by a group of unnamed, mischievous celebrities during a goodbye bash for the departing 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?” Chappelle said on a new episode of Naomi Campbell’s “No Filter” YouTube series published Tuesday.
“I saw this happening. I’m not going to say who did it,” he went on.
“But it was celebrities, writing all this crazy s–t and putting them all over there. I saw them doing it, so when I saw it on the news, I laughed real hard.”
Chappelle said the notes were left during one of the last White House shindigs thrown by the Obama family before they moved out at the start of Trump’s term.
In 2019, former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the missives included biting remarks like “You will fail” and “You aren’t going to make it.”
An ex-aide said at the time, “It was a mess that first week.”
“Yeah, there were mean notes left in odd places. One in a deputy press secretary’s office, one inside a desk drawer in upper press, another on a bathroom mirror. They were all about how we were doomed to failure,” the former aide said.
“Those notes definitely happened. They even left us Russian vodka in the cabinet,” another source added at the time.
“They were trolling us from the minute we got there. It was definitely just ridiculous. We were trying to find the bathroom, and we get these notes saying, ‘You will fail,’ and ‘You’re not going to make it.’”
Former workers under Obama denied they were responsible for the notes and some even said Grisham should be fired for the claim. Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice described the allegations as a “bald-faced lie.”