Issue of the day: New book spills beans on Melania

ANEW memoir penned by a one-time friend of America’s First Lady is spilling lots of beans on Melania Trump’s life at the White House, including claims of rivalry with her step-daughter Ivanka.

Who has written the book? Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, 50, was a long-time friend of Mrs Trump after the pair met in New York in 2003. Wolkoff was a special events planner for Vogue magazine and it is thought their paths crossed as she helped to organise a raft of glittering highprofile Manhattan social events.

She worked for Mrs Trump? Wolkoff, whose firm organised the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017 and was paid $26 million for the project, went on to become a senior adviser to ex-supermodel Mrs Trump from early 2017, until the First Lady cut ties with her in Februry 2018 following a backlash to revelations over her inauguration payment.

But now?

Wolkoff has written the tome “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady”, due out on Wednesday. Her publisher says it is a “candid and emotional memoir”.

And some of the leaks suggest…

…that it’s not all rosy in the Rose

Garden. It has been reported that Wolkoff at some point recorded the First Lady making disparaging remarks about the President and his adult children and details of these remarks will feature in the book.

It comes in the wake of…

…a bizarre moment at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Thursday night after Ivanka was returning to her father’s side following her speech. Mrs Trump gave a wildly exaggerated smile and as soon as the First Daughter passed her by, her face dropped and became stone cold, with the exchange going viral on social media. “Call it a hunch, but I don’t think Melania likes Ivanka very much,” one Twitter user jested.

“Operation block Ivanka”?

An excerpt from the book published in New York Magazine alleges that Mrs Trump plotted with Wolkoff to keep Ivanka out of the photographs of President Trump taking the oath on Inauguration Day with a project named “Operation Block Ivanka”. Wolkoff writes that Mrs Trump approved seating arrangements for the platform that would keep her step-daughter out of the camera shot.

Petty?

Wolkoff writes: “Yes, Operation

Block Ivanka was petty. Melania was in on this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka shouldn’t have made herself the centre of attention in her father’s inauguration.”

What has the White House said so far?

The First Lady’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said: “If there were any recordings taken, it’s really unfortunate to take advantage of somebody’s trust like that while being a friend. I have never heard Mrs. Trump say anything disparaging about the family. They’re a close-knit family.”