Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, 50, didn’t hold back her controversial opinion about her former best friend Melania Trump‘s marriage to Donald Trump, 74, when she called the union “transactional”, in a tell-all interview with the BBC on Sept. 11. The author, who published her book, Melania and Me, which is about her experiences with the First Lady and President of the U.S., on Sept. 1, also admitted she thinks the political couple gain “arm candy” and security by being together in their “made-for-TV” commitment.
“I do believe it’s a transactional marriage. Donald got arm candy,” she told the BBC in the interview, which can be seen above. “Melania got two dynamic decades. She was a young model, she didn’t have success yet. She met Donald, she married, she became an American citizen, they had a son and ten years after that she’s the first lady of the United States. I do believe it was a magic moment, and I also believe it was a made-for-TV moment.”
In addition to discussing Melania and Donald’s marriage, which took place in Palm Beach, FL in Jan. 2005, Stephanie talked about the 50-year-old former model’s cover of Vogue and the feature on their wedding, which came out only a month later. “The Vogue cover legitimized Melania, legitimized Donald as well,” she said. Melania smiled and posed in her wedding gown on the cover of the issue alongside the words “DONALD TRUMP’S NEW BRIDE”, which proved to be an amazing opportunity for her considering the hard work she put into working as a professional model at the time.
Stephanie’s been getting a lot of attention for her new memoir about Melania and even seemed to hit a nerve with the First Lady herself when Melania took to Twitter to write a tweet, which can be seen below, that didn’t mention a name but seemed to be aimed at her ex-friend of 15 years. In the tweet, which was shared two days after the release of Stephanie’s book, she called out “delusional & malicious” gossip while mentioning a roundtable she was taking part in. “This afternoon I will be hosting a roundtable with some incredible citizens in recovery & the amazing organizations that support them. I encourage the media to focus & report on the nation’s drug crisis, not on delusional & malicious gossip,” it read.
Stephanie’s claims in her book are just some of the many stories that formerly close family members and friends/colleagues have publicly released about Donald and Melania since they’ve been in the White House. Donald’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, wrote a book called Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, about the billionaire’s history and her alleged experiences with him. Donald’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, also wrote a book called Disloyal: A Memoir about his 12 years working for him, and many journalists have given their opinions in books about his presidency.