Former Melania Trump adviser Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff has created quite the cottage industry by seemingly betraying and attacking the former First Lady since leaving the White House.
Of course, long before seeking the approval of the Trump-hating liberal media by turning on Melania Trump, Ms. Wolkoff seemingly worked overtime to ingratiate herself into the Melania orbit. As per past news reports, she met Melania Knauss sometime around 2003. Not long after that, she attended the wedding of Donald Trump and Melania and, later, the baby shower welcoming Trump’s son Barron. As reported around that time, Ms. Wolkoff described Melania Trump as: “the sister I never had before.”
Sure. Let’s go with that.
Flash forward to June of 2015 when then-businessman Trump rides down the escalator of Trump Tower with Melania at his side to announce that he is running for President of the United States. With that announcement comes the opportunity for Ms. Wolkoff.
Town & Country magazine says, “The Vogue alum hoped the First Lady would be her ticket back to the center of the fashion world.” And then some.
It was reported that soon after the January 20, 2017, inauguration of President Donald Trump, event planner and former Vogue staffer Ms. Wolkoff was brought on as an unpaid advisor to First Lady Melania Trump. Part of her duties would be to help organize the inauguration.
Jump ahead to February of 2018 when the New York Times ran a story that created massive interest…and shock. Within the report, the New York Times revealed that WIS Media Partners -- a company Wolkoff had started only about six weeks before the inauguration -- was paid $25.8 million by the president's inaugural committee for its role in planning the event. Yikes.
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Of that amount, it was reported that Ms. Wolkoff received $1.6 million. Not bad for an “unpaid advisor” to the First Lady.
A First Lady, Ms. Wolkoff, was about to next betray with a “tell all” book.
Soon after the Trumps read the New York Times article, the First Lady’s office publicly announced that it would no longer work with Ms. Wolkoff. Soon after that, Ms. Wolkoff signed a book contract with a major publisher, too – as many believe – to exploit her relationship with then-First Lady Melania Trump. A book that used “secret” recordings of the First Lady by Ms. Wolkoff to fill its pages.
In September of 2020, when Ms. Wolkoff was on “The View” to promote what many viewed as a betrayal of Melania Trump, Meghan McCain confronted Ms. Wolkoff about the secret recordings. Said Ms. McCain in part:
“I don’t like tell-all books like this,” McCain said. “I think secretly recording your friend and selling its contents for profit certainly ups the ante and seems not only unethical but just gross.”
In response to the publication of the book, the spokesperson for the First Lady, Melania Trump, issued a statement, saying: “[Winston Wolkoff’s] intent to secretly tape the first lady and break her NDA to publish a dishonest book is a sad attempt to advance her own name. Simply put, it is an exercise in narcissism and self-pity.”
It was also an exercise in generating a great deal of money for Ms. Wolkoff. The betrayal of Melania Trump made several bestseller lists, including hitting number one on the New York Times list.
By even a conservative estimate, between billing for her inauguration work and royalties from her Melania Trump smearing book, Ms. Wolkoff made millions of dollars off the Trump name. Isn’t that enough?
Why not take the money and move on with her life?
But no, as it turns out, Ms.Wolkoff is not nearly done attacking Melania Trump.
Last week, former First Lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance when she spoke at a naturalization ceremony at which she called the pathway to citizenship in the U.S. “arduous.” Mrs. Trump also mentioned that after taking the United States Oath of Allegiance, she felt “a tremendous sense of belonging.” The former First Lady – who speaks five languages – stressed: “For me, reaching the milestone of American citizenship marked the sunrise of certainty. At that exact moment, I forever discarded the layer of burden connected with whether I could live in the United States. I hope you’re blanketed with similar feelings of comfort right now.”
Apparently, Ms. Wolkoff saw that appearance and Mrs. Trump’s heartfelt words as an opportunity to get back in the limelight and kiss up to the far-left media. During an interview on CNN, Ms. Wolkoff called Melania Trump’s remarks “quite repulsive.”
No. What is “quite repulsive” are former “friends” who betray trusting public figures, make millions in the process, and then seek ways to replicate the grift all over again when it seems more and more likely that Melania Trump will once again become the First Lady of the United States.
Shameless, sad, and stomach-churning.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the book The 56 – Liberty Lessons from those who risked all to sign The Declaration of Independence.
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