Dropping by The View Wednesday to talk about her tell-all book on Melania Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff had to contend with Meghan McCain, who was in a feisty mood because she apparently took exception to Wolkoff for purportedly betraying the First Lady, a former friend of the author.
Just the day before, McCain went off on Sarah Huckabee Sanders [1] for defending President Donald Trump, The Daily Beast [2] reports.
Echoing a charge she’d earlier made against Mary Trump, who released her own blockbuster tell-all book about her family earlier this summer, McCain had some sharp words for Winston Wolkoff, [3] whose own tell-all book is Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.
“I don’t like tell-all books like this,” she said. “I think they’re in really bad taste in general. And I think secretly recording your friend and selling its contents for profit certainly ups the ante and seems not only unethical but just gross.”
Then McCain referred to a statement from Melania Trump’s office which claims Wolkoff is “out for revenge” and asked her “Can you honestly just sit there and tell me that’s not true?”
McCain noted that “on a personal level” if someone had written such a book about her mother, Cindy McCain, “it would break my family.”
“Do you understand the implications of this, that it could have on them, just as people?”
Well here’s my two questions: Do we even care about the implications? Aren’t most of us sick of the Trumps by now?”
Winston Wolkoff has also been working with prosecutors who are investigating [4] if any financial crimes were committed in connection with Trump’s inauguration in 2017. And her book sheds light on this since she was a leading organizer for the inauguration and later worked as an unpaid adviser to the first lady. The book also reveals that Winston Wolkoff felt “thrown under the bus” by the Trump Whitehouse and she notes she was turned into “the cover girl for the inauguration shenanigans.”
McCain paints this as a case of sour grapes, but at the end of her questioning, Winston Wolkoff thanked her for asking the questions because this gave her the opportunity to clear up what she said is the biggest “misconception” about her book.
“I did not write this book for money, I did not take any advance,” she said. “This was a chance for me to tell the true story and not be anonymous anymore. I’m on the record.”
Winston Wolkoff notes writing the book was a chance to vindicate herself and that by the time she began recording Melania, she no longer considered herself friends with the first lady, per The Daily Beast.
“All the stories that crushed me burned me, and the White House propaganda machine (we’re all familiar with that by now) made up about me, that made headlines around the world, broke me, my integrity, my life literally went into shatters because of exactly what you are talking about,” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “I didn’t press record on a friend. I pressed record after I was accused of a crime and I was thrown under the bus and I was told by my friend, ‘I’m sorry, this is the way it has to be.’ That’s when I pressed record.”
But McCain continued her yap dog attack and continued to defend the first lady, even after Winston Wolkoff said the book was meant to expose “the depth of their corruption, the depth of their deceit, and the depth of their disregard for everyone,” including Meghan’s own father, John McCain.
This led view host Joy Behar to commend Wolkoff, telling her “Sticking your neck out for this administration in these particular times is not easy to do, so good for you.”
Considering Melania’s pitbull temperament perhaps it was brave of her to do this, and while much of the book likely doesn’t tell us more than we already know, it sheds further light on the wrongdoings of the Trump Whitehouse.
WATCH:
“These are the people behind closed doors running our country and they are not doing it in your best interest.”
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and adviser of the first lady, explains why she wrote her book about her time with Melania Trump. https://t.co/9fvU7VKkvL [5] pic.twitter.com/VAxPSB066Y [6]
— The View (@TheView) September 9, 2020 [7]