Melania Trump Lashes Out At Her Former Best Friend’s Book, Calls It ‘Delusional & Malicious Gossip’

Melania Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to lash out at “delusional & malicious gossip” after a memoir written by her former best friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, sparked unsavory headlines. Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady revealed a number of alleged scandals surrounding Melania, including a rumored rivalry with Ivanka Trump.

“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,” Melania wrote.

The tweet came as she prepared to host an event on the drug addiction crisis, which is a part of her Be Best campaign.

As The Daily Mail explained, Winston Wolkoff worked on the Trump inauguration, and also acted as an unpaid advisor in the White House’s East Wing during the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency. According to the publication, she left the administration in February 2018 after it was revealed that the president’s inauguration cost $107 million, which was twice the expense of Barack Obama’s first inauguration, and that $26 million of this money went to her firm.

The Daily Mail noted that after her exit from the East Wing, Winston Wolkoff began recording her meetings with Melania. She said that as scrutiny regarding the inaugural spending mounted, she was concerned she would take the blame and sought to protect herself via the recordings.

Her explosive memoir generated headlines around the world with the claim that Melania schemed to keep her husband’s daughter Ivanka out of the inaugural photographs. As The Inquisitr reported, the book claimed that the soon-to-be first lady was put in charge of seating arrangements for the event, and — with the help of the memoir’s author — placed Ivanka in a position where cameras would not be able to capture her in group photos of the event. According to the writer, the plan was named “Operation Block Ivanka.”

Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff to the first lady, described the author as “dishonest” in a statement to The Daily Mail because of the fact that she taped of Melania.

“The book is not only full of mistruths and paranoia, it is based on some imagined need for revenge. Wolkoff builds herself up while belittling and blaming everyone she worked with, yet she still managed to be the victim. Sadly, this is a deeply insecure woman whose need to be relevant defies logic,” she wrote to the publication.

In an interview with The Washington Post on September 2, the book’s author also alleged that Melania used private email accounts and messaging apps during her time in the White House. Winston Wolkoff claimed that the president’s wife used an email account from a MelaniaTrump.com domain, a private Trump Organization account, and two messaging apps — iMessage and Signal — while in the White House. This allegation is particularly controversial given the Trump campaign’s focus on Hillary Clinton’s alleged use of private email accounts which, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, they described as “worse than Watergate.”