On Thursday (Oct. 1), Melania Trump’s former White House aide — Stephanie Winston Wolkoff — shared secretly recorded conversations between herself and the First Lady with CNN. Wolkoff, who was promoting her new book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, said she began recording her phone calls with Melania after she left the White House.
Appearing on Anderson Cooper’s CNN segment, Wolkoff shared snippets of her conversations with Melania in June and July of 2018. At the time, the FLOTUS was discussing the criticism she and her husband, Donald Trump, had received over border patrol efforts that separated immigrant children from their parents.
“All these kids that I met, they’re here in the shelters because they were brought by it through coyotes — the people — or trafficking,” Melania says in one clip. “And that’s why they put them in jail. And the kids, they go in shelters, and the way they take care of them… the kids, they said, ‘Wow, I’ll have my own bed? I will sleep on the bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?’ It’s so sad to hear it, but they didn’t have that in their own countries. They sleep on the floor. They are taken care of nicely [in the shelters]. But, you know, yeah, they are not with [their] parents. It’s sad. But, when they come here alone or with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something.”
Melania goes on to say that she attempted to reunite immigrated children with their parents, but was unsuccessful.
“I was trying to get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn’t have a chance. [They] need to go through the process and through the law,” she says. The First Lady further accuses “liberal media” of not reporting on her efforts.
“We put it out… They would not do the story. You would not believe it,” she says. “Because… they are against us because they’re liberal media. Yeah, if I go to Fox [News], they will do the story. I don’t want to go to Fox.”
Speaking with Cooper, Wolkoff said she thought Melania had sympathy for the children and their families, but “regardless of that, she steps in line and she just decides that what she has heard and what she’s been told is what the rule of law is in our country.”
In another clip, Melania appears to be complaining about her First Lady duties of preparing the White House for Christmas.
“I’m working, like, my ass off at the Christmas stuff that, you know, who gives a fu*k about Christmas stuff and decorations?” she says. “… And I say that I’m working on Christmas planning for the Christmas. And they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that were separated?’ Give me a fu*king break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that?”
Lastly, Wolkoff shared a conversation between the two after Melania received backlash for wearing a jacket that read, “I really don’t care. Do u?” When Wolkoff asks Melania why she wore the jacket, she replies, “I’m driving liberals crazy that’s for sure… And they deserve it.”
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is the worst; this is the worst,’” Melania continues. “I mean, come on. They are crazy.”
CNN aired the recordings just before both Donald and Melania were diagnosed with Coronavirus on Friday (Oct. 2). Listen to the tapes below.