- Melania Trump’s former close friend and adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is said to have secretly taped the first lady to make disparaging remarks about her husband and stepdaughter Ivanka.
- Wolkoff drew on these tapes and years of friendship with Melania to write a book about her tumultuous relationship, “Melania and Me: My Years as Confidant, Advisor and Friend to the First Lady.”
- In a fragment of her book published Thursday, Wolkoff describes Melania’s exciting relationship with Ivanka and an attempt by the first lady to minimize the role of her stepdaughter in the inauguration.
- An administration official denied Wolkoff’s report of Melania’s efforts to block Ivanka’s face from appearing on TV at the inauguration and accused Wolkoff of “foreign obsession with the Trump family.”
- Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.
Former first wife and adviser to first wife Melania Trump Stephanie Winston Wolkoff has secretly tapped the first lady, according to various comments about her husband and stepdaughter Ivanka, according to multiple media reports.
Wolkoff drew on these tapes and years of friendship with Melania to write a book about her tumultuous relationship, “Melania and Me: My Years as Confidant, Advisor and Friend to the First Lady.” The New York Times reports that Wolkoff probably had plans to hand over Melania’s bonds to a news outlet prior to the book’s release on September 1.
Wolkoff came to the inauguration at the First Lady’s office as an unpaid adviser, The New York Times reported. She resigned amid controversy over the inauguration’s finances and reported being paid $ 26 million for her work.
“Was I fired? No,” Wolkoff said in 2018. “Did I personally get $ 26 million or $ 1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes.”
‘Operation block Ivanka’
An excerpt from the book published Thursday in New York magazine describes the construction and immediate aftermath of the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who Wolkoff played a key role in the organization.
Drama with Ivanka Trump has been a problem from the beginning, according to Wolkoff.
Ivanka, who Wolkoff says refers to Melania as “princess”, wanted to play a more central role in the inauguration than the incoming first lady was comfortable with, according to the book.
“It was Donald’s inauguration, not Ivanka’s,” Wolkoff writes. “But no one was brave enough to tell her that. Melania was not happy about sending Ivanka over the schedule and would not allow it. She was also not happy to hear that Ivanka agreed to walk in the parade of Pennsylvania Avenue. with her children. “
Wolkoff said this led to “Operation Block Ivanka”, an attempt to ensure that Ivanka would not be shown by TV cameras at the inauguration stage during key moments of the ceremony, including when or when Donald Trump was sworn in. t he took the oath of office of Chief Justice John Roberts.
“Yes, surgery block Ivanka was small,” Wolkoff writes. “Melania was in this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka should not have made herself the center of attention in her father’s inauguration.”
An administration official denied Wolkoff’s account of ‘Operation Block Ivanka’ and accused Wolkoff of ‘foreign obsession with the Trump family.’
“I’m not sure how that could have been possible when Ivanka was on stage before the funeral, and at every inaugural event – just like her brothers and sister,” a Business Insider official said. “This sounds like more of Stephanie’s bizarre story, and strange obsession with the Trump family.”
Melania and Ivanka Trump at the White House on January 20, 2017.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Family turf wars
Things only got more exciting when the Trump family started putting in the White House.
Since Melania was in the first months of the Trump administration in Manhattan – which Mary Jordan of the Washington Post would later write in her book – it’s been part of Melania’s attempt to gain leverage in renegotiating her to secure a prenuptial agreement and a better inheritance for her son Barron – Wolkoff was left to serve as the “linebacker” of the first lady in a touring war with Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Wolkoff writes that she and Melania Trump immediately suspected that Ivanka was leaking to the press when they began seeing “reports that the East Wing was a dark, lonely, sad, spider web place.”
“We suspected Ivanka immediately,” she writes. “According to Vicky Ward’s book Kushner, Inc., Ivanka said during the transition that the First Lady’s office, under Daddy’s management, would become the ‘Trump Family Office’. “
Wolkoff adds: “The West Wing was not big enough for the Kushners. They wanted the East Wing too.”
Wolkoff also explodes Ivanka for using a private email account to conduct official business in the White House – the same charge so effectively armed by the Trump campaign against Hillary Clinton.
“Ivanka asked her White House staffers to write to her on her private e-mail – the exact crime that the Trumps crippled Hillary Clinton for during the general election,” she wrote. “Would someone sing ‘Shut them up!’ “Ivanka’s private server? Doubtful. The email thing was hypocritical, to say the least. But the Trumps made their own rules.”
Wolkoff’s book is published by Simon & Schuster, which is behind other recent books by close former Trump associates, including the niece of President Mary Trump and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
The publisher said Wolkoff’s book would provide new details about Melania’s reactions to the “Access Hollywood” tape and allegations that her husband had business and made hush money payments, as well as why the first lady controversially wore a coat with the words, “It really does not matter to me, right?” printed on it.
