Melania slams former bestie's book alleging Ivanka rivalry, secret emails as 'delusional and malicious gossip'
First Lady Melania Trump, on Thursday, September 3, slammed the "delusional and malicious gossip" about her after her former best friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, revealed her bitter rivalry with step-daughter Ivanka Trump. Wolkoff, in her new memoir titled 'Melania & Me' also revealed that the first lady had been using a secret email account. The author worked on the Trump inauguration and was an unpaid adviser in the East Wing at the beginning of the Trump administration.
Melania's criticism of the stories concerning her tenure in the White House comes as she is preparing to host an event at the White House on the drug addiction crisis as part of her Be Best campaign. The first lady took to her Twitter account on Thursday to write: "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."
As her husband, President Donald Trump, enters the final phase of his re-election campaign, Melania has focused on increasing her national profile in the past week. The first lady addressed the Republican National Convention making a case for Trump's second term. She has also been making news recently because of Wolkoff's memoir.
Wolkoff, in her memoir, has mentioned details surrounding the allegedly tense relationship between Melania and Ivanka, and has also revealed that the First Lady uses a private email account. The revelation had led to online criticism considering her husband has consistently slammed political rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for doing the same. "Melania and I both didn't use White House emails," the author told the Washington Post. It is reported that the first lady used a private Trump Organization email account, an email account from the MelaniaTrump.com domain and iMessage. The messages she reportedly exchanged are believed to show her discussing government hires, state visits, schedules and the Be Best initiative.
The reports, however, were rubbished by the East Wing, which said that Melania had followed due requirements of the Presidential Records Act. The first lady's chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, in a statement, said: "In consultation with White House ethics officials, from the beginning of the Administration, the First Lady and her staff have taken steps to meet the standard of the Presidential Records Act, relating to the preservation of records that adequately document official activities."
A similar claim had been made concerning Ivanka Trump by the Washington Post in 2018. The Post report stated that Ivanka, a senior White House aide, had sent hundreds of emails about government business from a personal email account to White House aides, Cabinet members and her assistant. She, however, dismissed any comparison to the use of a private email by Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state's private email use had sparked an FBI investigation. Although use of personal emails is permitted for government officials, it is illegal to discuss any classified information on it.
Melania's former friend reportedly also admitted to recording her conversations with the First Lady, however, she defended herself saying she did it for protection. She told the outlet that she began recording Melania in February 2018 until they stopped communicating on January 1, 2019. Wolkoff said that she had decided to record the conversations the day after the White House terminated her contract. "I didn't record a friend. I would never record a friend," Wolkoff told The Post. "But — this is very important — she was no longer my friend when I pressed record."