The stories attached to Melania Trump’s new memoir Melania just get more bizarre by the day. From the strange promo videos she’s been releasing to some of the details of what’s inside, I think it’s safe to include the former first lady in the collective “weird” we’ve been calling these people.

Now The Guardian has gotten its hands on an excerpt of the book, which is due out in less than a week.

In it, Melania claims that her then-press secretary Stephanie Grisham prevented her from explaining the odd jacket she wore in October 2018 to the border town of McAllen, Texas.

Melania was on a “mission” to visit with the kids being held in detention centers at the time, and the press went absolutely crazy speculating about what the message emblazoned on the back — “I Don’t Really Care, Do U?” — could possibly mean.

At the time, Grisham told the press that there was no hidden meaning, that it was “just a jacket.” This was, in fact, her tweet that day:

Today’s visit w the children in Texas impacted @flotus greatly. If media would spend their time & energy on her actions & efforts to help kids – rather than speculate & focus on her wardrobe – we could get so much accomplished on behalf of children. #SheCares #ItsJustAJacket

— Stephanie Grisham 45 Archived (@StephGrisham45) June 21, 2018

They likely should have left it at that.

In the new book, the former FLOTUS says she tried to explain the coat, but Grisham blew her off. “I was determined … not to let the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border,” Melania writes. “In fact, I decided to let them know that their criticism would never stop me from doing what I feel is right. To make the point, I wore a particular jacket as I boarded the plane, a jacket that quickly became famous.”

“‘It’s a message for the media,’ I said, ‘to let them know I was unconcerned with their opinions of me’ [but] she told me I couldn’t say that. ‘Why not? It is the truth,'” Mrs. Trump recalls telling Grisham. “Ignoring my comments, she told a CNN reporter she was friendly with that it was simply a jacket, a fashion choice with no underlying message.”

Oh, and she tweeted the above. Because, as you know, press secretaries OFTEN say the total opposite of what their bosses tell them to say. And with Melania, she NEVER allows someone to put words in her mouth. Just look at what Melania did to former state department official Mira Ricardel.

Grisham, however, remembers a “damage control session” once back at the White House. Donald himself stepped in, saying “You just tell them you were talking to the f*cking press,” Grisham quoted him as saying.

“He’s not a crackpot … he knows he’s lying. He used to tell me when I was press secretary, ‘Go out there and say this.’ And if it was false, he would say, ‘It doesn’t matter, Stephanie. Just say it over and over and over again, people will believe it.’ He knows his base believes in him,” she told CNN in January. “He knows he can basically say anything and his base will believe what he’s saying.”

Now THAT sounds like the Trumps we know.

It’s interesting, however, that Melania would turn this into a beef between herself and Grisham, even if Grisham DID tell her to say it was meaningless and then say just that herself to the press.

Because what Melania ended up telling everyone was exactly what Grisham says that Melania’s husband told her to say.