`What a fool I was': Revenge tell-all book `Melania and Me' isn't sweet
If anyone is capable of plumbing the shallows of the enigma that is first lady Melania Trump, it should be Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, her loveydovey, emoji-wielding close friend of nearly two decades who has written an “I was betrayed!” book to beat all.
“Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady” (Gallery Books) joins the recent crop of Trump family take- down books as the November election nears, including“Too Much and Never Enough,” the best-selling psychological dissection of Mary Trump's uncle, President Donald Trump.
Wolkoff's book is no psych workup of Melania Trump, 50, although the reader may come away with somewhat better insight into the character and personality of America's most elusive first lady since the 1940s.
Wolkoff adored Melania Trump ( the book is littered with their texted emojis and “I love you” exchanges, plus many exclamation marks). She so wanted to show how “special” her friend was that she took on Herculean tasks (helping organize the inauguration and the first lady's office, staff, FLOTUS initiatives and White House residential quarters) for which she was not fully prepared and ended up in the hospital with an excruciating back malady exacerbated by the stress.
And then she was “fired,” even though she was an unpaid FLOTUS advisor, and “thrown under the bus,” in her famous
words to the New York Times, by West Wing enemies who sought to make her the sole scapegoat for the incompetence and alleged corruption in planning and spending for the inauguration.
USA TODAY reached out to Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's chief of staff and spokeswoman, for a response.
“This book is not only wildly self-aggrandizing, it' s just not truthful,” Grisham told USA TODAY in an email. “It is an exercise in bizarre twisting of the truth and misguided blame for the sake of self-pity. It's unfortunate and concerning that she's overstated their friendship and her very brief role in the White House to this degree.”
Wolkoff feels her reputation and integrity were permanently damaged by the Trump White House, aided by “inaccurate” reporting by the media and by Melania Trump's failure to defend her. At the time, she couldn't even defend herself fully because she had signed an NDA, yet another reason why signing non-disclosure agreements can be risky.
Thus, this book is tell- all revenge. But note: Wolkoff still cares enough about Melania Trump to dedicate the book to her.
It' s built on three main themes: Who is Melania Trump? Who in Trumpland traduced Wolkoff and why? And what's the gossip about relations between Melania
Trump and step daughter Ivanka Trump, her father's favorite who was dismissed as “Princess” by her stepmother?
Just who is Melania Trump?
As Wolkoff tells it, the scales have finally dropped from her eyes: Melania Trump turns out to be as mysterious to her as she is to many Americans – someone she thought she knew. She paid a price for her mistake.
She was warned. Wolkoff, 50, was fixture in the New York fashion/arts/charity scenes and used to work for another enigmatic woman, Anna Wintour of Vogue, and helped organized nine annual Met Galas. She first met Melania Trump through Vogue and liked her immediately.
But after the 2016 election, she was repeatedly told by her other New York friends not to work with the Trumps – any of them. “R.U.N!” was the message she got.
“My sixth sense warned me not to trust the Trumps. By my heart said, `Melania is not one of them. She's one of us.'”
This was the wrong assessment, Wolk off writes –emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, socially and professionally. “I thought I had an amazing friend. But when it really counted, Melania wasn't there for me. It suddenly became painfully real to me that she wasn't really my friend, in the true sense of the word.”
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.
How did Wolkoff get picked for the Presidential Inaugural Committee?
Wolkoff was so a political she had never voted in a presidential election before 2016 ( she voted for Trump because he was her friend's husband), so naturally, to the Trumps, she was perfect to help produce the inauguration festivities being organized by the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee. And it was Ivanka Trump and “the family” who offered her the job.
She took it, she says, because it was her “patriotic duty,” and to protect Melania Trump's interests: Both feared Ivanka Trump's alleged desire to be the top female Trump on the big day. Wolkoff was Melania Trump's “spy” on the PIC, and a big portion of the book is taken up with the 69-day nightmare countdown to Jan. 20, 2017 – a farrago of failures, missteps and confusion, as she describes it.
She made herself anathema to others on the committee, headed by billionaire Trump pal Thomas Barrack, by repeatedly complaining about the slapdash way the committee operated and what she saw as “irregularities” in the budgeting and accounting of millions of dollars.