The Times Magazine 13Winston Wolkoff also recounts, rather
hilariously, Melania’s insistence, post-election,
on being referred to as “first lady-elect of
the United States”. Winston Wolkoff pointed
out that she couldn’t have that title, as she
hadn’t been elected. But Melania would not
budge, and, says her former friend, usually
got her way.
Winston Wolkoff’s White House role began
by simply helping her friend with an outfit
- or eight – for Inauguration Day. No designers
wanted to be associated with the incoming
administration, Winston Wolkoff says; she
leveraged her friendship with Ralph Lauren
to persuade him to dress the new first lady.
Then, she says, she was asked to help plan
the inauguration itself. “It was an honour. I
thought it was just a swearing-in and a party,”
she says, rolling her eyes now at her naivety.
Winston Wolkoff devotes a great deal of
her book to those frantic, chaotic 70-odd days
between Trump’s election and inauguration,
as plans and budgets for 18 parties, dinners
and balls spiralled out of control. The Trump
children, she reports, all wanted a piece of the
action, with Don Jr and Eric Trump planning
a “Camouflage and Cufflinks” ball, for which a
$500,000 “Grizzly Bear” ticket would include
a hunting and fishing trip with them both, and
$1 million “Bald Eagle” tickets would include
meeting the new president.
Ivanka, meanwhile – whom Melania calls
“Princess”, according to Winston Wolkoff - attempted to muscle in on every aspect
of her father’s inauguration, jostling for
position in seating plans and picture line-ups.
Winston Wolkoff reports that she and Melania
launched “Operation Block Ivanka” to keep
the first daughter’s face out of the frame in
the historic swearing-in shot. The competition
between the two women only worsened after
Trump took office, says Winston Wolkoff,
who in her book makes a case for Melania
being cruelly sidelined by West Wing staff
and the politically ambitious Ivanka and
Jared Kushner.
Again, it’s somewhat confusing, as she’s
seemingly asking us to feel sympathy for
the woman whose conversations she would
secretly record – in seven hours of tapes. It
was Winston Wolkoff’s recordings that led
to the revelation last year of Melania’s now
infamous quote, “Who gives a f*** about
Christmas stuff ?” and her claim that children
taken from their parents and detained at the
border are receiving better care than they
were in their homes. “The kids, they say,
‘Wow, I will have my own bed? I will sleep
on the bed? I will have a cabinet for my
clothes?’ It’s so sad to hear it, but they didn’t
have that in their own countries. They sleep
on the floor.”
The reason for recording her friend, says
Winston Wolkoff, was the fallout from the
inauguration, for which a colossal $107 million
was raised, double the amount of any previous
inauguration. There was grotesque spending
on the events – $924,000 on 7ft-high wreaths,
moss-covered obelisks, flowers and other
decorations for a “candlelight” dinner at
Washington DC’s Union Station; make-up
for 20 staff members at a cost of $10,000;
a bill from the Trump International Hotel
of more than $1.5 million – designed to give
Donald Trump a dramatic, theatrical entrance
to office.
The donations and spending of the
Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC)
are now the subject of an investigation by the
Washington DC attorney-general, for which
Winston Wolkoff is a witness. And, bound by
a nondisclosure agreement that she signed
when working with the PIC, she cannot, she
says, reveal what she knows about financialirregularities, except under subpoena. But
she does claim of the Trumps: “The planning
[of the inauguration] was all for the family;
everything was done to line their own pockets.”
On the day we speak, it is less than
24 hours after Trump’s second impeachment.
But Winston Wolkoff believes the family won’t
be too adversely affected should the patriarch
former president be found guilty in a Senate
trial. “They’ve set themselves up for life,” she
asserts. “It’s systemic Trumpism. They’ve
made sure they are seeded in every institution,
every organisation, every branch of every
company they possibly can be seeded in.
They’ve made sure they will always continue
to profit off his presidency,” she alleges.
Somewhat incredibly, given the chaos
and stress of the inauguration, when Melania
asked Winston Wolkoff to stay on as her
chief strategist and senior adviser, she agreed.
Initially, her contract was for $179,000, but,
says Winston Wolkoff, Donald Trump’s staff
had blown the entire budget, leaving nothing
for Melania’s own team. Winston Wolkoff
accepted the position as an unpaid but
contracted volunteer: salary, zero.
Still, she was hardly short of money, even
though she says the reports, which eventually
led to her departure, that she’d been paid
$1.62 million for her work on the inauguration
were wildly incorrect; that sum was split
between 15 executives. She was paid $480,000.
And she was certainly not, she says, paid
$26 million: WIS Media Partners, the
company she created six weeks before the
inauguration, had handled $26 million of
payments to vendors, but that was not her
personal fee.However, that was the claim made in
February 2018 by The New York Times. In a
front page story, based on the PIC’s tax filings,
it declared, “Firm of First Lady’s Friend Got
$26 Million for Inaugural Work”.
She immediately texted the first lady.
“That’s when I knew there was a shift, because
she wasn’t calling me back, and when she did,
she would tell me that she was in a meeting.”
The next day, her voluntary contract with the
White House was terminated.
More headlines followed: “Melania Trump
Parts Ways with Adviser amid Backlash over
Inaugural Contract”. Winston Wolkoff “begged
Melania to clear my name”, writing to her,
beseeching, “ONLY YOU CAN REPAIR
THIS TERRIBLE INJUSTICE TO ME, MY
REPUTATION AND MY INTEGRITY BY
ISSUING A STATEMENT.” Her response,
says Winston Wolkoff, was, “ ‘I would defendyou, but I don’t want to break the law,’ ” and to
advise that her “friend” spoke to her lawyer.
“I thought that she had empathy, but she has
zero,” says Winston Wolkoff. “I thought that
she had morals. She has zero.”
When pressed finally to speak directly to
her, Winston Wolkoff reports that Melania
said, “ ‘Don’t be so dramatic. You weren’t fired.
It came to that because of politics. It is what
it is, Stephanie. Move on.’ ”
Until five years ago, Winston Wolkoff
admits, somewhat ashamedly, she had never
voted, and, in 2016, she voted for Trump. “It is
totally embarrassing to admit, but, yes, it was
because he was my friend’s husband.” More
astonishingly, after everything her daughter
claims to have been through with the Trumps,
Winston Wolkoff’s mother, to whom she is
extremely close, and most of her family still
supported him in 2020. “Everyone voted for
Trump – they’re all Republicans.” To give
Winston Wolkoff her due, she seems sanguine
about her family voting for a man whose office
and entire operation, she says, deliberately and
strategically hung her out to dry.
“I admit, I was a political neophyte,” she
says. “I stepped into this crazy lion’s den, this
den of thieves, and I did not know what I was
getting myself into.”
Now though, she says, she sees it all quite
clearly. “When I needed her, she folded like
a deck of cards,” she says of Melania. “She
wasn’t really my friend. In fact, I wish I’d
never met her.” nMelania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My
Friendship with the First Lady is published
by Simon & Schuster (£20)SHE AND MELANIA LAUNCHED ‘OPERATION
BLOCK IVANKA’ TO KEEP HER OUT OF SHOT