Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Lippman. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Eli PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday, but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 28. We hope distance makes the heart grow fonder. Over the past 31 years at the White House, GREGG TRAINOR has been reading, sorting, and forwarding the letters and packages people send to the president. As the non-partisan director of special projects for presidential correspondence, he helps the occupant of the Oval Office hear Americans’ concerns. He’s done it as an unstated trailblazer: Trainor is deaf. Since he began working at the White House in 1991 under President GEORGE H.W. BUSH , Trainor has opened, in his estimation, over a million letters and packages by now. They give him a unique view into the country: the sad, the funny, and even the gross. His time at the White House also reveals the advances and shortcomings of workplaces in accommodating deaf people over the past three decades. Last Thursday, West Wing Playbook sat down with Trainor and an interpreter in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to get his perspective and understand his story. He said one of the strangest packages sent to the White House was a dark pink bathroom rug for GEORGE W. BUSH. “And they wrote a letter and they're like, ‘nice rug.’ And that's all they said,” Trainor recalled. During the Clinton administration, a child wrote and asked if BILL CLINTON kept UFOs in the basement of the White House. While every president receives love letters — which are forwarded to the Secret Service — Clinton received the most of the five presidents for whom Trainor’s worked. He recalled one note to the 42nd president imprinted with a lipstick kiss. And the grossest package? A random blanket that had, it appeared and smelled, been peed on. “I touched it with my hands!” he lamented. “I packed it up, I left, and I'm washing my hands really quickly.” Many of the letters, however, are more illuminating than colorful. “What impacts me is Social Security income — when it's not enough to live — and they write letters about that, and veterans when they struggle with the VA and receiving benefits,” he said. “Those are the ones with the most issues throughout my 31 years, it's been very consistent… It's better, but there's people who are still struggling, and they're still facing obstacles when trying to receive benefits, no matter what party is in office.” Besides his professional responsibilities, Trainor also had to navigate a workplace that initially was not set-up to accommodate him — even after President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Trainor said he is the first deaf staffer in the presidential correspondence office. When he started, he and his supervisor would sometimes have to communicate with each other by taking turns typing on a computer keyboard. He said his repeated requests for a teletype machine were shrugged off until the Clinton administration. Interpreters weren’t always available so he sometimes attended meetings with little idea of what was being said. Interpreters are always on hand now but they are hired from outside agencies, which means he doesn’t always get a consistent person familiar with his job, the terminology associated with it, and the White House writ large. Even meeting presidents has come with a dose of awkwardness. He recalled that the first President Bush didn’t learn he was deaf until they met. “He was like uhhhh… shocked and didn't really know how to interact.” The president couldn’t decide whether to shake Trainor’s right or left hand, implying the deaf might shake hands differently. “Very awkward,” he recalled with a grin. President George W. Bush was much more conscientious. “He waited for me to look at him because he knew that I needed to lip read,” he said. “But still, I didn't understand him. I couldn't read his lips, because he had a heavy accent.” He appreciated the effort, though. BARACK OBAMA knew some sign language and signed to Trainor when they met (he hasn’t met JOE BIDEN yet but he has his fingers crossed). Trainor, who was born deaf and wore a hearing aid from a young age, lost what little hearing he had after turning 50. “I was depressed for around two years,” the 63-year-old said. He ultimately decided to receive cochlear implants, which improve hearing but are controversial in the deaf community, including among Trainor’s friends, for the signal they send that being deaf is a deficiency. “They just thought that I wanted to become hearing,” he said. He added that he has no regrets about getting the procedure. While he still can’t have a telephone conversation, Trainor now can enjoy music because he can detect certain instruments or a few words and phrases. His favorite artists include Fleetwood Mac and DAVID BOWIE, who he listens to on his drive in from Maryland in the morning and on an iPod he keeps in his office. Through the past few decades, Trainor has become a pillar of the correspondence office. “I first knew him when I was an OPC intern 10 years ago in the Obama administration, and I can confidently say he’s universally adored by generations of staff members who have come through the White House mail room,” said GARRET LAMM, who is now Trainor’s supervisor. Trainor largely seems happy with his job and life but he did have a message for hearing people. “Show more respect to deaf people,” he said. “In the federal government jobs and the public in general. Everywhere.” MESSAGE US — Are you PETER NEAL, Biden’s new grandson-in-law? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous. 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