Former Melania Trump Adviser Describes Job As 'Worst Mistake Of My Life'
A former friend and adviser of Melania Trump says it was “the worst mistake of my life” to work for the Trump family, adding: “I wish I had never met her.”
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was an unpaid White House adviser to the first lady until February 2018, when her contract was terminated as questions about inaugural spending arose.
She has written a book about her experiences, lashing out at the first lady for not defending her over questions about costs for the presidential inauguration she helped produce.
In Melania And Me: The Rise And Fall of My Friendship With The First Lady, the author says: “She wasn’t really my friend. In fact, I wish I had never met her.”
Wolkoff, a New York-based event planner, said the pair first met in 2003 in the hallways of Vogue magazine, where she worked.
Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Trump, criticised the book as “full of mistruths and paranoia” based on an “imagined need for revenge”, PA Media reports.
Wolkoff also wrote about frostiness in the relationship between the first lady and the president’s eldest daughter Ivanka. She said she and the first lady both once “bellied over with laughter” after Trump referred to Ivanka — long seen as her father’s favourite child — as “Princess”.
The author also detailed how they launched “Operation Block Ivanka” to keep her from being too prominently featured in inauguration day photographs of her father being sworn in to office.
Ivanka Trump declined comment on Monday. A person close to her said it is traditional for a president’s children to join in such a historic occasion.
Wolkoff devoted two of the book’s 11 chapters to planning for the January 2017 inauguration, describing the committee responsible for raising money to pay for several days of events as beset with organisational and communications issues that complicated her work.
She said she repeatedly raised questions about spending but eventually came to be viewed as the problem. Trump’s...
