First lady Melania Trump denied claims in a new book written by her former friend and adviser Stephanie Wolkoff of having a sour relationship with other members of the Trump family.
“Anybody who secretly tapes their self-described best friend is, by definition, dishonest,” Trump’s chief of staff Stephanie Grisham told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “The book is not only full of mistruths and paranoia. It is based on some imagined need for revenge. Wolkoff builds herself up while belittling and blaming everyone she worked with, yet she still managed to be the victim. Sadly, this is a deeply insecure woman whose need to be relevant defies logic.”
Grisham, who also served as White House press secretary from July 2019 through early April, added that the friendship between Trump and Wolkoff was exaggerated.
“This book is not only wildly self-aggrandizing. It’s just not truthful,” Grisham said. “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, who claimed to have been friendly with Trump for 15 years up until she left her post in the White House, made a series of claims in her book titled Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, which is due for release on Tuesday. Among them is talk of a rift between the first lady and her stepdaughter, Ivanka Trump, as well as other members of the Trump family working at the White House.
“Ivanka would never stop trying to muscle in on Melania’s events,” Wolkoff said, describing her motivations as “relentless and driven.”
In the run-up to the release of her book, Wolkoff participated in an interview with ABC News and described one incident in which she put labels on office doors to prevent Ivanka Trump’s team from claiming them.
“I pulled out a red Sharpie and yellow Post-Its … and I just started marking up, ‘communications,’ ‘chief of staff,'” Wolkoff said.
A source close to Ivanka Trump told ABC News that “those claims never happened” and that “Ivanka never considered having an office in the East Wing.”
Wolkoff refused to comment on reports that said she secretly taped Melania Trump to write the book but said, “I can back up everything that’s in the book 100% … and Donald and Melania know that.”
At the White House, Wolkoff became Trump’s senior adviser but left her position in 2018 after news broke that her firm had been paid $26 million to help organize inaugural activities.
Wolkoff rejected that she was forced out or dismissed from her role due to reports about the excessive profits received by her firm. She also claimed to have only received a fraction of the $1.62 million that went to her firm.
The book’s publisher is Simon & Schuster, which also published former national security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened and Too Much and Never Enough by the president’s niece Mary Trump.
[Also read: Melania Trump: ‘I believe that we need my husband’s leadership now more than ever’]
