How Melania Trump Destroys Her Friends

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12/22/20 • 57 min

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“I begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing,” says Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, author of Melania and Me.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff considered Melania Trump a friend—more than a friend, really. Wolkoff even followed Melania to Washington, helping produce the 2017 inauguration and advise the incoming First Lady. But when the stories started coming out about the insane overspending during the Inauguration, Wolkoff says Melania threw her to the wolves—allowing Wolkoff to take the blame in the press and kicking her out of the White House.

“I begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing. So the betrayal, the pain of that was like—I gave up my whole life for this woman. No one else would help Melania. I mean, she was alone,” Wolkoff tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “I should've known better. She is just like her husband.”

So Wolkoff began taping her calls with Melania—calls which formed some of the bedrock for her book, Melania and Me. Improbably, Wolkoff and the First Lady kept talking, even after Wolkoff was cast out.

When Melania wore that instantly-infamous “I Don’t Care” jacket on a trip to a center for migrant kids, Wolkoff called.

Their mutual friend, the fashion designer Herve Pierre, was being attacked online for the fiasco because he had made dresses for Melania in the past. But this jacket was a $39 item from Zara. Wolkoff asked the First Lady: Would she clear things up? Say something in public?

Melania admits that Pierre “had nothing to do with that jacket.” But she declines to make any kind of statement on his behalf. Instead, Melania laughs, “I'm driving liberals crazy, that's for sure. And you know... they deserve it.”

Wolkoff was horrified. “When I sent [Pierre] the photograph [of the jacket], he immediately wrote me back saying, ‘Is this Photoshop? ‘And I wanted so desperately to say yes,” Wolkoff tells Jong-Fast. “He was devastated.”

“There's so much callousness,” Wolkoff continues. “Even in just trying to get [Pierre] paid for collaborating with her and making her first dress, it was like pulling teeth. There is no empathy or remorse for the fact that here's someone who was blamed because he's known as her ‘stylist.’”

Moments like these—and the casual dismissal over the Inaugural—made Wolkoff feel better about recording conversations with a woman to whom she had once been so closely connected.

“Taping a friend is, it's unacceptable. It really is. But Melania was no longer my friend when I pressed record. Because when I pressed record on the conversations I had with her, it was only after she, Donald, and the PIC [Presidential Inauguration Committee] [tried] to make me the scapegoat and to falsely accuse me for the overspending of $107 million of the inaugural funds,” she tells Jong-Fast. “First and foremost, I taped to protect myself because I needed to be protected once I knew I was going to be under investigation.”

Jong-Fast answers, “I don't think anyone ever regrets taping a Trump.”

This is part two of a two-part talk with Wolkoff. In part one, Wolkoff took us inside the war between Ivanka and Melania Trump.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing,” says Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, author of Melania and Me.

When Melania wore that instantly-infamous “I Don’t Care” jacket on a trip to a center for migrant kids, Wolkoff called.

Moments like these—and the casual dismissal over the Inaugural—made Wolkoff feel better about recording conversations with a woman to whom she had once been so closely connected.

Jong-Fast answers, “I don't think anyone ever regrets taping a Trump.”

This is part two of a two-part talk with Wolkoff. In part one, Wolkoff took us inside the war between Ivanka and Melania Trump.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

TEASER: Zerlina Maxwell: Republicans Know Dems Suck At Messaging to Black People

Political pundit and author Zerlina Maxwell was booed and hissed at during a Politicon a few years ago (which is “a Comic Con for political nerds”) because she said that if Bernie Sanders ran in 2020, which he did, he’d have to improve his messaging toward communities of color. Fast forward to this year and Maxwell has a book out on the subject and stands by her statement. “It seems like I was psychic or something, but really I was just saying a thing that seemed to be an obvious point that somebody needed to say, and I think Republicans understand this,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal. “That's one of the reasons why they try to suppress voters of color and they try to pack power in, in the court system. You know, they understand the demographic shifts in a way that I feel like Democrats needed to.” What does she think of Biden’s cabinet? Molly points out that some have criticized the president-elect for not enlisting more Black women. But Maxwell is OK with his choices, despite the bar being incredibly low thanks to Donald Trump. (“I mean, we're already doing a lot better than we were just a couple of weeks ago.”) Speaking of Trump, Maxwell shares the one thing she can’t quite wrap her head around: “I look around and I can't believe that there's 70 plus million people who are getting duped by somebody who's not intelligent,” she says, both in general and with the coronavirus messaging. “We lie to ourselves when we say that we are exceptional in particular ways in which we are proving to ourselves in this last year, we are not,” she adds. “Like, if you asked Americans to do something mildly inconvenient, uh, to protect their neighbor, they're going to sue them.” Plus! Jong-Fast asks Maxwell what white feminists can do to be more intersectional, and frankly, better to Black women and causes. To start, she says, aboriton isn’t the only cause feminists should focus on: “They need to really lean in to the fact that racism is a problem they need to care about too.”

Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now.

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Next Episode

How These Comedians Turned MAGA Men Into Laughingstocks

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The hand-down-Rudy’s-pants incident was one of a whole bunch of different ways that political comedians rammed into Trumpworld in 2020. Matt Wilstein, The Daily Beast’s resident comedy guru, breaks down the highs and the lows with Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on a special crossover episode of The Last Laugh and The New Abnormal podcasts.

From Jordan Kleppler’s head-first dives into the maskless hordes at MAGA rallies to the viral impressionists who took over your Twitter feeds, Matt, Molly, and Jesse break down the funniest moments, and answer some of the biggest questions as we finally leave this hell year behind: What does Sarah Cooper do if she can’t channel Trump? How did Balire Erskine manage to become Tiffany Trump’s bestie? How does Kleppler prep to make unintentional comedy with MAGAmen? What was up with Jim Carrey’s impression of Joe Biden? Was Saturday Night Live ever really funny? Ever?

For more great political comedy, listen to The Daily Beast's The Last Laugh podcast.

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