White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called President Trump a “counterpuncher” when asked about his joke that Rep. John Dingell, who died in February, might be in hell.

Trump made the remark at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, on Wednesday as he was simultaneously impeached in the House. Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who took her husband’s Michigan congressional seat, said the comments made her healing much harder.

Appearing on Good Morning America on Thursday, Grisham said she hadn’t spoken to Trump about a formal apology for his comment but thanked Dingell and her late husband for their service, adding that she was “very very sorry” for the widow’s loss. When asked why Trump might have made the joke, she pointed to the attacks from his political opponents and the crowd at the rally.

“He has been under attack and under impeachment attack for the last few months and then just under attack politically for the last two and a half years,” she said. “I think that, as we all know, the president is a counterpuncher. It was a very, very supportive and wild crowd, and he was just riffing on some of the things that had been happening the last few days.”



“The president is a counter-puncher,” @PressSec tells @GStephanopoulos when asked about Trump’s comments about the late Rep. John Dingell last night and said he was “riffing" off the crowd. https://t.co/42dLkc3XOx pic.twitter.com/FCXbcbY0r6 — Good Morning America (@GMA) December 19, 2019



Trump made the joke while characterizing a conversation he had with Debbie Dingell. He claimed she called him after her husband died, but Dingell said that is untrue and that he called her.

“She calls me up,” Trump said. “‘It's the nicest thing that's ever happened. Thank you so much. John would be so thrilled. He’s looking down. He would be so thrilled.’”

He continued, “I said, ‘That's OK, don't worry about it.’ Maybe he's looking up, I don't know. Maybe, but let's assume he's looking down.”

The joke elicited some groans from the audience at the rally, which was held in John Dingell’s home state, which he represented in the House from 1955 to 2015. Dingell was honored in Washington, D.C., after his death, where Trump ordered flags to fly at half-staff to pay tribute to the congressman.

