The latest tell-all book involving a member of the Trump family hits shelves tomorrow. Melania Trump’s former good friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff penned “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.” The book’s description described why the 15-year friendship fell apart:
After Trump won the 2016 election, Wolkoff was recruited to help produce the 58th Presidential Inauguration and to become the First Lady’s trusted advisor. Melania put Wolkoff in charge of hiring her staff, organizing her events, helping her write speeches, and creating her debut initiatives. Then it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities. Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man, knowing full well who was really to blame. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff.
The New York Times cites this excerpt:
“I was there at the beginning. I witnessed the transformation of Melania from gold plate to 24-karat gold. I believed she had the heart to match, that she was genuinely caring and loving and worth all of our attention. Throughout our early friendship, she lived up to what I saw in her. Watching her now, and seeing that only the gold shell remains, I have to wonder if that’s all she ever was, and I was the sucker who bought the fake watch on the street corner.”
In the book, Wolkoff goes into detail about the tense relationship between the first lady and first daughter. In Vanity Fair, Emily Jane Fox write that Melania once sent her friend a text referring to Ivanka as a snake. Fox said:
Melania was more overt about her relationship with her stepdaughter, Ivanka Trump, or “Princess,” as Melania jokingly referred to her, according to the book. During the inauguration, Wolkoff writes that she and Melania launched “Operation Block Ivanka,” making sure that she was seated out of frame in the photos of President Trump being sworn in. Melania, she writes, did not want Ivanka to attend the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, so Wolkoff left it off of her schedule, until Ivanka texted her to ask why it wasn’t there.
And Wolkoff says Ivanka wasn’t the only person to get icy treatment. The former friend alleges Melania didn’t seem to care about much. USA Today writes:
Remember the first lady’s “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket? It could be her motto, the way Wolkoff tells it. The first lady explains to Wolkoff she really doesn’t give a fig what her critics say about her – not about her clothes or shoes, her speeches and Be Best initiative, her frequent absences, her decision to remain in New York for the first five months of the administration, her refusal to engage with the media, her husband’s tweets – nothing.
In an exclusive interview with Good Morning America, Wolkoff said she has proof to back up all the claims she makes in the book, “There’s nothing in the book that I can’t backup.” Watch more of what Wolkoff told GMA below.
