Much like a third world despot, Donald Trump tried to have Secretary Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, arrested after he took office. He screams at people and sets them up against one another just to watch them duke it out. It appears, Melania Trump is no exception.
The then-Donald Trump Party-led House raked Clinton over the coals multiple times trying to find a chink in the iron lady’s armor when she was Secretary of State, but Clinton was good. Their beef was that she had used private emails to do government business when President Barack Obama was in office. The House Republicans even grilled her for 11 hours one time.
It would be natural to assume, given those sets of examples, the secretive First Lady Melania Trump was held captive by the volatile president. Yet, when her good friend of 15 years and former senior advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s memoir was just released, the illusion of the first lady evaporated.
The first lady often used a private Trump Organization email account to correspond with her friend several times a day.
Winston Wolkoff gave an interview to The Washington Post:
‘Melania and I both didn’t use White House emails.’
Amazon lists her book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady. She uncovered a truth about Melania’s emails. Chief White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007 wrote:
‘A first lady is not a government employee. [But] if she is doing United States government business, she should be using the White House email.’
Painter said:
‘It’s total hypocrisy. They got elected acting as if Hillary Clinton ought to be in jail for using the wrong email.’
Spokesperson for Melania Trump, Stephanie Grisham, released a statement that read:
‘[It’s] revisionist history. [The book was] based on some imagined need for revenge. Literally everyone she worked with was an obstacle in her mind, people she belittled and blamed for everything. This is a deeply insecure woman whose need to be relevant defies logic.
‘Anybody who secretly tapes their self-described best friend is not only dishonest, they’re deceitful.’
The former friend has been cooperating with three separate federal investigations into the inaugural spending. The way that Grisham’s mind works, she assumed the author was out for revenge:
‘This isn’t about me doing something to Melania. his is about me sharing with the world who this family is and what goes on behind closed doors.’
The author said:
‘[E]verything in the book is 100 percent verifiable and factual.’
Melania’s former friend has been accused of betrayal for taping her:
‘I didn’t record a friend. I would never record a friend. But — this is very important — she was no longer my friend when I pressed record.’
The writer met Melania in the early 2000s when she was dating the Donald. At the time, Winston Wolkoff was a long-time staff member at The Vogue magazine. The two had long lunches. The author said she admired Melania’s cool confidence:
‘Melania’s not lonely; she’s self-contained. People think she’s, like, sad and trapped, and she’s not.’
Winston Wolkoff noted:
‘[I]t’s so important for me to be with my father. And I was like, “When does she stop?’”
Then, Ivanka said:
‘It is traditional and appropriate for the children of the president to join in such a historic occasion. A simple Google search could have helped Stephanie understand that.’
The recorded conversations and detailed records Winston Wolkoff kept during her friendship with Melania hinted that she agreed with the first lady. They both saw Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner in a dim light:
‘You know how they are snakes.’
There was a powerful tension between the Melania and the First Daughter Ivanka. The president’s favorite child and favorite son-in-law fought to coopt the White House East Wing offices, which traditionally belonged to the first lady. The author wrote:
‘Melania felt that her interests were being constantly stonewalled, and we knew that it was always Ivanka behind the friction and suspicion and distrust.’
White House spokesperson Carolina Hurley released a statement, too:
‘These are absurd, petty and desperate accusations from a clearly very insecure and paranoid former employee. Ivanka came to Washington to focus on policy that uplifts hardworking Americans and their families. This book is a sad attempt at relevance.’
Trump refused to choose between Melania and Ivanka. Winston Wolkoff said:
‘Again, it’s their type of normal marriage. Melania is not like any wife who would say, “Your daughter is blah blah blah.” It’s not worth it to her. There’s an understanding between them that it just is what it is. And that’s how she’s decided she wants to live her life.’
Winston Wykoff’s book uncovered a relatively happy but odd marriage between Melania and the Donald:
‘They totally get along. It’s crazy. I mean, they laugh together. She knows who she married. He knows who he married. They are one and the same.’
The author voted for Trump in 2016, but:
‘[Working for the Trumps was] the worst mistake of my life. I wish I had never met her [Melania.]’
After the president made her the fall guy for the missing millions from the inauguration fund, she was:
‘more than a million dollars into the hole.’
The author told the reporter:
‘This is the last thing I wanted to do, but I had to know what happened, if this friendship was real, and how I got myself in so deep. It’s upsetting to see them snow the country the same way they did it to me. They’re hurting so many people.’
Winston Wolkoff will be voting for Joe Biden in November.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
