Melania Finally Responds to Ex-Friend's Tell-All

The First Lady blogs about Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's bestseller
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 17, 2020 12:00 PM CDT
Melania Finally Responds to Ex-Friend's Tell-All
First Lady Melania Trump waits for the first presidential debate Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio.   (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Melania Trump is finally responding to a former friend whose allegations have rippled through the media for months, NBC News reports. Trump doesn't mention Stephanie Winston Wolkoff by name, but is clearly targeting her—and her best-selling book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with The First Lady—in a blog on the White House website. In the post, Trump derides "major news outlets" that "eagerly covered salacious claims made by a former contractor who advised my office. A person who said she 'made me' even though she hardly knew me, and someone who clung to me after my husband won the Presidency. This is a woman who secretly recorded our phone calls, releasing portions from me that were out of context, then wrote a book of idle gossip trying to distort my character." For more:

  • "Never once looking within at her own dishonest behavior and all in an attempt to be relevant," Trump goes on. "These kinds of people only care about their personal agenda—not about helping others."
  • By contrast, the First Lady paints herself as being devoted to children with her Be Best public awareness campaign: "To push forward a personal agenda that attempts to defame my office and the efforts of my team, only takes away from our work to help children," she writes.
  • Wolkoff's response: "I find it puzzling that the First Lady of the United States asked someone she 'hardly knew' to attend her nuptials, join her for countless lunches, help plan the presidential inauguration, stay over at the White House and Mar-a-Lago and act as her senior advisor," she tells Politico. "I wrote this book to share with the public my experience of working with Melania, our fifteen-year friendship, and her ultimate betrayal."
  • Wolkoff has accused the First Lady of trying to block Ivanka Trump from the president's swearing-in photos, cursing about her own Christmas duties, using private email in the White House, and not wanting to use the same toilet and shower used by Michelle Obama.
(The Justice Department is now suing Wolkoff.)

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