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Melania Trump, 50, laughed off the outrage that was sparked after she wore a jacket emblazoned with the message, “I really don’t care. Do u?” when flying out to visit migrant children at the Texas border.
That’s what her ex best friend and former senior advisor is claiming in her new book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With The First Lady.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, 50, says that she spoke to Mrs. Trump days after she wore the $39 Zara jacket as she flew to the U.S.-Mexico border on June 21, 2018.
Jetting off to the New Hope Children’s Shelter in McAllen, Texas, the mom-of-one wore the army green jacket at a time when her husband, President Donald Trump’s family separation policy was being widely criticized.
But, when Ms. Wolkoff confronted her about the backlash her fashion choice had received, the author claims the First Lady “laughed” it off.
“I decide what I wear for myself,” Ms. Wolkoff claims Mrs. Trump told her in response to her concerns that the First Lady’s stylist, Herve Pierre, was being trashed online.
Asked what “prompted” her to wear the jacket, the author claims the First Lady said the following, “I’m driving liberals crazy! You know what? They deserve it!”
The author later claims Melania said, “Some people get too much into it. They connect stuff to my clothes, but they don’t really know me. They think so much, their heads will explode.” The First Lady also allegedly said, “I don’t care what they think. They’re always negative.”
HollywoodLife reached out to the White House for comment. “This book is not only wildly self-aggrandizing, it’s just not truthful,” Stephanie Grisham, Mrs. Trump’s spokesperson told us. “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.”
In contrast to Grisham’s response, Ms. Wolkoff claims in her book, which goes on sale on Sept. 1, that she and Melania Trump had a very close friendship that spanned 15 years.
In addition to lunching together, she says their families and children socialized with each other and they exchanged countless texts, many of which are shared and quoted in her book, Melania and Me.
In fact in a Good Morning America interview, which aired on Aug. 31, the author defended the account of their friendship, saying, “I can back up everything that’s in the book 100 percent… and Donald and Melania know that.” (See below.)
Their relationship soured, however, in February 2018 after the New York Times published a front page article claiming that Trump’s inaugural committee paid Ms. Wolkoff, $26 million to help plan his January 2017 inauguration.
It’s an allegation that the author – the former director of special events at Vogue who produced the Met Gala for nearly a decade – denies and has receipts to prove it.
She insists that she was used as a scapegoat to cover up the actions of others and was devastated that her BFF didn’t defend her. “A Trump is a Trump is a Trump,” Ms. Wolkoff writes in her book. “All along, I thought she was one of us. But at her core, she’s one of them.”
Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff goes on sale on Sept. 1.