Melania and Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

Author:Stephanie Winston Wolkoff [Wolkoff, Stephanie Winston]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781398501225
Google: nWP4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2020-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

No Way In

I still didn’t have a contract or an access badge to get into the East Wing, where I was working, or the Residence, where I sometimes slept in room number 326, but I did have a tremendous amount of the responsibility.

I needed access to do my job! Every day, I had to check in and go through the security process before I could enter the East Wing. In my most resentful moments, I imagined Ivanka and Katie Walsh gathering around the live feed of my daily bag searches and laughing their asses off.

Melania wrote to Reince Priebus about my contract and badge, but he wouldn’t get back to her for hours. Can you imagine someone ignoring any other First Lady like that? It was so disrespectful. Apparently, they didn’t care that this was a priority for her. I watched and listened to her do her best to fast-track approval for my badge, and yet, it didn’t materialize. Was it paranoid to think that the West Wingers did not want me physically in the building? I think not.

All week, Lindsay and Tim tried to schedule a sit-down with members of the White House Management Office to be briefed about planes, vehicles, computers, phones, and additional assets they would be providing. They finally met, and Lindsay was given her assets the very next day. I couldn’t get them to slot me in, which was frustrating. I didn’t even know how to communicate with them. How was I supposed to correspond on behalf of the First Lady without using government email or a secure phone? More items to add to the list.

Late on Friday of our first week, Melania told me, “I’m not going to DC tomorrow.” Heavy sigh. Really? Was it such a good idea to leave Donald all alone during his very first weekend as president? Who knew what he’d get up to without her grounding force. (That Friday, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, a.k.a. the Muslim Ban, the first wildly controversial EO of his presidency.) If only Melania had changed her mind, perhaps this ill-advised decision may never have occurred. Doubtful, but you never know. That one extra opinion might have swayed him.

For a fleeting, insane moment, I thought, Maybe it’s a good thing that Jared and Ivanka will be around to keep him company. I’d barely seen my kids in weeks. Clearly, I was thinking about needing family around for myself; I shook it off. I didn’t have time to think about me.

A text came in from the First Lady, instructing me to advise the West Wingers that she would not be attending the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. They needed to know ASAP so they didn’t reserve a seat for her. This was the same National Prayer Breakfast where part of the president’s address mentioned how much Arnold Schwarzenegger sucked as the host of The New Celebrity Apprentice.

Why was she backing out of it? “They told me two days ago,” she wrote. This was becoming the

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