Melania Trump was caught on camera flashing an icy smile at Ivanka Trump which immediately turned into what appeared to be an expression of disgust during the Republican National Convention on Thursday night. The glance’s quick temperature change caused the clip to go viral and it has amassed more than 10 million views.
According to an excerpt published this week from Melania and Me, a new book by Melania Trump’s former confidant Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was also briefly a member of her staff.
Writes Wolkoff in the excerpt, published by New York magazine: “And while the story is built around her friendship, and then falling out, it delivers a vivid account of Melania’s strange relationship with her adult stepchildren — particularly Ivanka, to whom Wolkoff writes Melania referred, with almost joking bitterness, as ‘Princess.’ This account is not written from a distance but from within Melania’s tightest orbit — literally, in that case, inside Melania’s living room. Wolkoff grants legitimacy to years of rumors about a rivalry between Ivanka and Melania, with the First Daughter angling for screen time and power and proximity at her stepmother’s expense. And it isn’t an unflattering portrait of the First Lady, up close as it is. Not completely, anyway. Even as Wolkoff details her Herculean efforts to keep Ivanka from being positioned too close to her father during the swearing-in, Melania comes across as sometimes amused and often annoyed — but never consumed — by any of this.”
“Operation Block Ivanka” was launched to keep the First Daughter out of photos at Trump’s swearing in, Wolkoff wrote:
“To plan this, I needed to know exactly where the family would be seated and the camera angles. One of the WIS executives sent me notes from the walk-through. He had been prohibited from taking pictures; instead, he’d drawn a sketch to give me a decent overview of the Trump section and where the chairs would be positioned in a semicircle around the dais. We knew where the cameras would be located because the platforms were already in place. Using his sketch, we were able to figure out whose face would be visible when Donald and Melania sat in their seats, and then when the family stood with Chief Justice John Roberts for Donald to take the oath of office. If Ivanka was not on the aisle, her face would be hidden while she was seated. For the standing part, we put Barron between Donald and Melania and made sure that Don Jr. stood next to Melania, not Ivanka. We were all exhausted and stressed out. Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty. Melania was in on this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka shouldn’t have made herself the center of attention in her father’s inauguration.”
