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No one will ever forget the sight of FLOTUS Melania Trump getting into her car in Texas after visiting children who had been separate from their families at the US Border in June 2018 wearing a $39 Zara jacket with a striking message written across the back: “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” The fallout was immediate and brutal, with many asking what in the world would have prompted the First Lady to wear such an insensitive piece when visiting heartbroken children who were reportedly in cages? The blame quickly went to her stylist Hervé Pierre, who received hateful messages and worried his career would be over after he was working pro bono for Melania.
A new recorded phone call by Melania’s former advisor and the author of Melania & Me, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, tells the true story of Melania’s personal decision to wear the ‘I Really Don’t Care, Do U?’ jacket and her self-serving reasoning behind it. “We talked about it, he has nothing to do with that jacket. He knows he had nothing to do with the jacket,” Melania tells Stephanie in the recording obtained by HollywoodLife, exclusively.
“I’m just telling you what he said to me. And he and he and he was taking screenshots of his Instagram because he felt so or whatever his Facebook whatever people write him on,” Stephanie replies, regarding the hate Hervé received over the jacket controversy. “Oh yeah, but that’s expected… because you know because he’s helping me, but it’s not like that he’s dressing me all the time…I had the idea myself, he’s not like all the time that he’s the only one for everything,” Melania explains further.
“So what prompted you to buy that?” Stephanie is heard asking in the recording. Laughing, Melania replies, “I’m driving the liberals crazy, that’s for sure. That’s you know, that’s what everybody’s like, Oh my god, this is the worst. This is the worst. They are crazy.”
“My reaction to the jacket was first I wanted to ask Hervé, ‘What the H happened?’ But, the first thing he texted me back was, ‘Is that a photo shop?’ He started getting hate emails on his Facebook, on his Instagram. People were just discrediting him and telling him awful things. He was distraught, he was on his way to Paris and he could not believe it,” Stephanie detailed the aftermath of the situation on the HollywoodLife Podcast. “He desperately wanted the world to know he had nothing to do with it, but Melania wouldn’t do it. Melania said, ‘He had nothing to do with it, so no big deal.’ It wasn’t a big deal to her to make sure that his reputation was taken care of.”
The former NYFW Fashion Director continued, “Melania wore the jacket because she believed that if she hadn’t worn the jacket, she would have only been on the news for two minutes. Melania is about attention, not intention, and that’s what people have to understand, and that’s what I had to come to learn.”
Stephanie detailed more of her tumultuous friendship with Melania in her book, Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall Of My Friendship With The First Lady. Further, in the recent episode of the HollywoodLife Podcast, she opened up about the former FLOTUS’s relationship with Donald, her friction with Ivanka and what will come next for the ousted Trump family. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.