Donald and Melania Trump’s marriage is a ‘transactional deal’ among string of claims by First Lady’s ex friend

The ex-best friend of Melania Trump has made some sensational claims to the BBC about the First Lady’s marriage to the US President.

Donald and Melania Trump are in a “transactional” marriage in which he gets a hot wife and she gets security, a former family friend has claimed.

Ex-Vogue magazine executive Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was friends with the First Lady for 15 years before they fell out, insinuated the US President and his model wife were in fact, not in love.

“I do believe it’s a transactional marriage. Donald got arm candy,” Ms Winston Wolkoff, the former senior adviser to FLOTUS, said in an interview with the BBC.

“Melania got two dynamic decades. She was a young model, she didn’t have success yet. She met Donald, she married, she became an American citizen, they had a son and 10 years after that she’s the First Lady of the United States.

“I do believe it was a magic moment, and I also believe it was a made-for-TV moment.”

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US President Donald Trump and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Her comments come as her controversial new tell-all book, Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with The First Lady, was released on September 1. It is the first book written about Mrs Trump from someone who has been in her inner circle.

The book has been slammed by a spokeswoman for Mrs trump, who said it was full of “mistruths”.

“Twenty years ago, she had been a barely-getting-by model in Paris,” she writes in her book, according to an extract published in New York magazine’s Intelligencer section.

“Thirty years ago, she’d lived in Communist Slovenia.

“On the inauguration program … she wanted to be listed as ‘First Lady-Elect’ even though, as I reminded her, she had not in fact been elected.”

Several other claims in the book include Mrs Trump’s secret war with the President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and that the First Lady uses a private email account, which Mr Trump criticised Hillary Clinton for doing during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Ms Winston Wolkoff fell out with the First Lady after helping to produce Mr Trump’s $US107 million inauguration in 2017, which was double the cost of Barack Obama’s.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff with her ex friend Melania Trump in 2017. Picture: Rex Features / Splash News

Controversy erupted over potential misuse of funds at the time, which was even the subject of a federal investigation, though Ms Winston Wolkoff claims she was a scapegoat for decisions made by the Trump administration.

She was upset the Trumps didn’t defend her when The New York Times reported her firm had been paid more than $US26 million for its role in the inauguration.

However, Ms Winston Wolkoff told Good Morning America that only $US1.62 million went to her company.

There are several damaging claims about Melania and Donald Trump in the new book. Picture: Filippo Monteforte

It has been reported that Ms Winston Wolkoff’s book was, in part, based on secret audio recordings of the First Lady, in which Mrs Trump criticised her husband and other members of the family.

Ms Winston Wolkoff has admitted to recording some of her conversations with Mrs Trump, saying she did it to protect herself from becoming the “fall guy” over the alleged misuse of funds.

Mrs Trump’s spokeswoman and chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, issued a scathing statement about Ms Winston Wolkoff’s book earlier this month.

“Anybody who secretly tapes their self-described best friend is by definition dishonest,” Ms Grisham said.

“The book is full of mistruths and paranoia, and clearly based on some imagined need for revenge.”

Donald and Melania Trump (nee Knauss) were married in January 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida. The couple have one son together, Barron Trump, 14.