Melania Trump Allegedly Lacked Funds to Hire Staff as FLOTUS as Money Was Given to Ivanka Instead

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide and friend of Melania Trump, once alleged that Melania had a limited budget to hire staff for her White House office during her time as the First Lady. Wolkoff claimed that a significant portion of the funds was diverted to Ivanka Trump, as per Mirror. Wolkoff, the author of the tell-all book Melania and Me, detailed how she was even compelled to reportedly forgo her salary so that two additional staff members could be employed to assist in setting up the East Wing for Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. These revelations were also discussed during Wolkoff's appearance on the Mooch FM podcast in 2021.

Wolkoff said, "I walked into the White House on January 22 and had dinner with the Trump family the day after the swearing-in. I was so looking forward after we had toured the East Wing so Melania and I to create this bipartisan group of women that were going to really make a difference to the world. I believed it was possible, and it was." Wolkoff then turned her attention to a discussion with Katie Walsh, Donald Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff. She recalled, "I'm realising Melania didn't have a budget and didn't really have any staff."

Melania's ex-aide added, "It was me interviewing everyone because Ivanka and Jared had used all of the budgets, all of the titles. Melania was left with a handful of titles and salaries that wouldn't enable us to hire anyone with any experience. So I gave up the original salary because I needed to hire two other people in order to be there and to help set up the East Wing." Wolkoff reportedly acted as an unpaid adviser to the former First Lady from January 2017 to February 2018. She also revealed her disappointment with the general lack of regard for the First Lady in the East Wing during that time, as per the Daily Express.

She said, "It was so disheartening because it didn't matter to me whether Melania was there, whether they felt Melania had the ability to do something that was going to be impactful. It was the fact that no one respected that she was the First Lady of the United States of America and the East Wing represented that to me and I held that in high esteem." In her book Melania and Me, released in September 2020, Wolkoff made several assertions about the former First Lady. These included claims that funds for former President Donald's 2017 inauguration had been misused.

Since then, she has faced allegations of violating a non-disclosure agreement by writing the revealing narrative. The reportedly frosty relationship between Melania and Ivanka is also a prominent theme of the book. Additionally, in the book, Wolkoff also recounts how Melania reportedly hesitated to move to the White House immediately, partly due to her reluctance to share the same shower and toilet facilities as former First Lady Michelle Obama, according to Politico.