In a secret audio clip recorded in 2018, Melania Trump told former adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff that she was frustrated with being criticized for President Donald Trump’s legislation that separated families who illegally crossed the southern border while also adjusting to her first lady duties, CNN reported.
“They say I’m complicit. I’m the same like him, I support him. I don’t say enough. I don’t do enough," she said to Wolkoff. “Where I am. I put, I’m working like [my] a** off on that Christmas stuff."
“Who gives a f**k about Christmas stuff and decoration? But I need to do it, right?” she continued.
The audio clips were recorded after Wolkoff's departure from the White House.
In another recording, Melania praised the increase of the children's quality of life in the detention centers, adding how "Mexico doesn't take care of them the same as America does."
"The kids, they say, 'Wow I will 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," she said. "They are taken care of nicely there. But you know, yeah, they are not with parents, it's sad. But when they come here alone or with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something."
The first lady's chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, criticized the release of the recording, saying it was "a clear attempt at relevance."
She added that her husband’s critics were mum on the subject of separating families when the previous president was in office.
“Then I do it,” Melania continues. “And I say that I’m working on Christmas, planning for the Christmas. And they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f**king break. Where they were saying anything when [Barack] Obama did that?"
On Thursday, Wolkoff told CNN that she believed Melania was conflicted as a mother, however, had gotten adjusted to fitting in with the White House's objective.
"I think that as a mother, those maternal instincts in her were set off and she did care," Wolkoff said. "But there is no husband to come to, the leader of the free world, to discuss how she's feeling about that. So 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."
Wolkoff went on to pen a book called Melania and Me which details her friendship with the first lady and how it quickly flamed out. According to The Daily Beast, the president’s lawyers have threatened Melania’s former friend with legal action to block the book, but their attempts have not been successful.
The book details the first lady's relationship with the president's daughter Ivanka, her thoughts on Michelle Obama and border policy.
The women's friendship began to unravel after more than a decade when it was revealed that Wolkoff pocketed a questionable amount of money for assisting in planning the inauguration.
According to the Washington Post, the 50-year-old’s event planning company was paid $26 million for its involvement in the inauguration and Wolkoff became the face of the event’s financial scandal that saw $40 million unaccounted for.
Melania’s advisors suggested that the first lady distance herself from Wolkoff, and in February 2018, White House officials terminated her relationship with the administration as an unpaid strategist, Vanity Fair reports.
