First Lady Melania Trump’s former close friend is speaking out about the First Family.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Linsey Davis shared on Monday Stephanie Winston Wolkoff took a swipe at the Trump family. She suggested they are “filled with friction, suspicion, deceit, deception,” as she also describes them in her book, “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.”
Talking about President Donald Trump as president, Wolkoff said, “Everyone does need to know what … this presidency is doing and what this propaganda machine behind this man at the White House is doing.”
Wolkoff, a former adviser to Melania Trump, met the first lady back in 2003, but “it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities,” the description for her book reads.
It adds, “Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man, knowing full well who was really to blame. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff.”
Wolkoff told ABC News that Melania Trump “stabbed me in the back” following The New York Times report that Trump’s inaugural committee paid her event planning firm nearly $26 million.
She said that she “begged” Melania Trump to make it clear publicly that she did not personally receive the large sum of money, but “when the time came for her to come and speak the truth about a friend who left everything behind to help her, she turned her back on me … stabbed me in the back,” she told ABC News.
See the interview below:
After saying she gave Melania Trump the “benefit of the doubt” that she was different than Donald Trump, now Wolkoff says, “A Trump is a Trump is a Trump.”
She also made it clear during her ABC News interview that she can “back up everything that’s in the book 100% … and Donald and Melania know that.”
Melania Trump’s spokesperson Stephanie Grisham has pushed back on Wolkoff’s remarks.
“Anybody who secretly tapes their self-described best friend is, by definition, dishonest,” Grisham said. “The book is full of mistruths and paranoia, and clearly based on some imagined need for revenge.”