Melania Trump’s ‘petty’ plot against stepdaughter Ivanka

Melania Trump tried to block Ivanka from appearing in photographs of Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017.

Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump during the presidential inaugural parade in January 2017. Picture: AFP.

Melania Trump tried to block her stepdaughter Ivanka from appearing in photographs of Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, a former friend says.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who helped to organise the event but later fell out with the first lady, said she helped Mrs Trump to set up “operation block Ivanka”. In her book Melania & Me, Mrs Wolkoff describes poring over sketches of the seating plan and camera locations and using them to ensure that Ivanka would be blocked from view at key moments.

“Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty,” she writes. “Melania was on this mission. But in our minds Ivanka shouldn’t have made herself the centre of attention in her father’s inauguration.”

Mrs Wolkoff says that Mrs Trump, 50, derided her stepdaughter, 38, in private, labelling her “princess”.

First Lady Melania Trump appeared to stop smiling as Ivanka, the US president's daughter, joined them on stage at the Republican convention.

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She writes that Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, are enamoured of the Kennedy dynasty. “It’s no coincidence that all three of their children – Arabella, Joseph and Theodore – share names with Kennedy family members,” she writes. “Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy and Joseph Kennedy you know; Arabella Kennedy was JFK and Jackie’s stillborn daughter.”

She says that Mrs Trump refused to move with her husband into the White House until the lavatory and shower used by the Obamas was removed and that Mrs Trump would say: “Pleasing anyone else is not my priority.”

For the inauguration, she says that Mr Trump demanded “tanks and choppers”, instructing her to “make it look like North Korea”.

Mrs Wolkoff was an Adviser to Mrs Trump but left in 2018 after controversy over money she received for work on the inauguration. Mrs Wolkoff feels that she was made a scapegoat by Mrs Trump and the pair have not spoken since. Stephanie Grisham Mrs Trump’s chief of staff, said the book was “not only wildly self-aggrandising; it’s just not truthful”.

The Times