With Cohen’s book due out in a couple of days, I realized I had better prop my eyes open and slog on through to the bitter end of Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.
For the first 250 pages (of 302, including 20 pages of photographs) we learn about Stephanie’s background, her meeting with Melania, their budding friendship, random stuff about fashion and New York Society, planning for the tRump inaugurations parties, getting the new First Lady’s office staffed, starting Be Best, and Stephanie’s increasing feelings of discomfort.
Impressions from the first 250 pages — not actual quotes.
What did we learn?
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is either deeply paranoid or they really were out to get her as their designated scapegoat (or both).
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is freakishly tall (her words).
Melania is a wonderful thoughtful kind woman who also is extremely self-centered and mostly doesn’t care.
Melania spends more than an hour a day on hair and makeup. She refuses to appear without looking “perfect.” I wonder how much we are paying for that?
Melania only does what Melania wants to do. She doesn’t really understand the concept of duty.
During the transition, Melania wanted to be referred to as “First Lady, Elect.”
Stephanie and Melania use a lot of emojis in their emails. [Enough to be irritating]
Melania loves her designer clothing, but won’t wear something from a designer also used by Ivanka.
Melania ignores criticism and isn’t emotionally touched by anything. But, she has a nice smile and a pretty laugh.
That said, Melania really didn’t like it when she was accused of being a high priced call girl.
Ivanka is a backstabbing, duplicitous, conniving snake. Also a leaker, crass opportunist and typical tRump grifter.
Reince Priebus and the rest of the West Wing crowd are a bunch of carnivorous turds circling each other in their tainted punchbowl of perfidy. [My words condensing a lot of stray digs]
Stephanie Grisham is a sneaky conniving snake.
Tom Barrack is a sneaky conniving snake.
KKKayleigh McNinny is a disloyal twit that Ivanka stole from Melania.
If the country is being run the same way the Inauguration Committee ran its finances, it’s a miracle we still have a country.
Reading about fashion puts me to sleep almost instantly. Gushing about Blatwhatever shoes or Pravda dresses bores me to tears. Who’s who in New York’s upper crust is even worse. It makes me want to grab that damn jacket from Melania and wave it around like a matador’s cape.
Working for tRump was enough of a pain in the neck that Wolkoff had to be hospitalized and have some vertebrae fused for her troubles.
On to the Meaty Stuff
Stephanie was hung out to dry as the fall guy for the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s financial mismanagement, which she claims had nothing to do with her. I find her claim credible.
Meanwhile, Clown Prince Jared still didn’t have security clearance to do classified work, and yet, there he was doing it, every day. On February 16, the Times reported that General John F. Kelly, Donald’s chief of staff, had ordered an overhaul of all White House security clearances. It wasn’t just Jared; presidential aide Rob Porter had somehow gotten FBI clearance to work in the White House despite the agency’s knowledge that he’d been accused of domestic violence.They’d let a twice-accused wife beater in the White House, no problem. But they’d escorted my potential hire out of the building for smoking pot once, decades ago.
Part of the fallout from General Kelly’s sweeping overhaul was his decision to cancel all contracts for volunteers, which included my gratuitous service agreement. It’d been signed only six months before. If Melania had just accepted my resignation—which she never acknowledged, ever—I would have had the dignity to say, “I quit.”
Stephanie appears to have the receipts to make this statement. I makes them throwing her under the bus another bit of grotesque White House flailing to coverup their misdeeds. She claims she could say more, except for another of those iron-clad NDAs keeping us from uncovering the truth.
I didn’t pay anyone a penny. I wasn’t paid $26 million. I wasn’t a part of the approval process, and I didn’t have access to the financing, not even WIS’s. Every budget was preapproved and authorized by Tom, Rick, Sara, and the PIC Finance Committee.
Melania refused to stick up for her “friend.”
So, in this story, written by the New York Times, again, just like the first two stories by Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel, there are no quotes from Donald or Melania, just a “source,” “operatives,” and “people who asked to remain anonymous.” Wow!
Melania explained to me, “We didn’t say it. The lawyers, they say we have to do it this way.” Oh, I see, the lawyers made the president and First Lady not tell the truth? That explains it.
The penny finally drops.
I now realize Melania is not a normal woman. Two women had described having sex with her husband on national TV in graphic detail in the same week. Her private response: “It’s politics.” Her public response: dead silence. It just wasn’t a human reaction.
Stephanie even commiserated with Michael Cohen
“Look at what they’re doing to me every day!” said Michael. “Every Wall Street Journal article. You think I don’t know who’s putting it out? Jared, Abbe Lowell [Ivanka and Jared’s lawyer], Don Jr. How do I know? People have told me. Who owns the Wall Street Journal? Rupert Murdoch. Fox News is state-run media. All I want is the same thing I was trying to do for you. Clear my name. Let them eat shit, which is what they should have been doing instead of throwing it on everyone else’s back.”
The denouement:
Throughout the years of our friendship, our mutual affection, maybe all I really saw was her charming, warm, grounding “personality.” I gave her the benefit of the doubt about her moral character, the virtues of empathy and honesty I have taught my children. I have tried to live my life by the principle that what you do becomes who you are. I was Melania’s enabler, and her using me became the basis of our friendship. I liked feeling needed. I believed she was a noble person and treated her that way, blinding myself to the truth about her to justify our long friendship.
I used to think she was different from her husband. I saw streams of daylight between them and thought Melania was more principled, kind, and honorable than Donald and all of his offspring. I was wrong about that.
A Trump is a Trump is a Trump.
All along, I thought she was one of us.
But at her core, she’s one of them.
Wolkoff has testified to three different grand juries investigating financial problems with the tRump Inaugural Committee. She has not been charged with any crime or had discussions about immunity.
My Verdict.
If you like reading about party planning and fashion, you’ll enjoy this. If not, jump ahead to the last 30 pages or so. It’s another full-throated indictment of the tRump clan from someone who was on the inside. Wolkoff writes from the perspective of a person who feels they have been wrongly accused of a crime. After finishing the book, I was surprised about how positively she painted Melania in the majority of the text. She didn’t come off as arrogant as Bolton or as sympathetic as Mary Trump. I have a hard time believing anyone could be that politically naive. But, she’s clearly not the crook Haberman made her out to be.
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Goodie started our day with some of her special good news: Do you believe in life after Trump? Saturday's Good News
Yosef 52 is back with even more of his deep dive into tRump’s scandalous relationship with our military: Trump and the Military, Part Two
Yosef 52’s world famous GOTV compilation is meant to be shared far and wide: GET OUT THE VOTE. Do It For the "Losers and Suckers"
There’s another WYgalinCali sponsored music festival tonight: Another Saturday Night - Love, 70’s Style (2.0)