First Lady Melania Trump ripped the establishment media and liberals for their treatment of her in July 2018, secretly recorded phone calls by a former friend reveal.
On Thursday evening, CNN’s Anderson Cooper featured Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend of Mrs. Trump’s, to air secretly recorded phone calls between Wolkoff and the first lady in an attempt to smear her character.
Mrs. Trump’s spokesperson Stephanie Grisham told Breitbart News in a statement:
[Wolkoff’s] only intent was to secretly tape the First Lady in order to peddle herself and her salacious book. There is no way to know if these recordings have been edited and it’s clear the clips were hand-picked and presented with no context. The First Lady remains focused on her family and serving our country.
Wolkoff is the author of the book Melania and Me in which she tells alleged stories of her friendship and time working with Mrs. Trump in the East Wing until her resignation in February 2018.
In the July 2018 recordings, meant to portray the first lady in a bad light, Mrs. Trump can be heard defending herself against attacks by the media who criticized her for her “Be Best” campaign and the stilettos she wears on a daily basis.
The first portion of the leaked recordings finds Mrs. Trump speaking about the horrific journey that migrant children trafficked across the United States-Mexico border experience at the hands of human smugglers.
In the call, Mrs. Trump defends U.S. Border Patrol’s handling of the victims of human trafficking:
All these kids that I met, they were here in the shelters because they were brought by it through coyotes, the people who were trafficking. And that’s why they put them in jail, and the kids they go in shelters. And the way they take care of them — it’s, you know, they even said, the kids they say, “Wow I will have my own bed? I will sleep on the bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?” It’s so sad to hear it, but they didn’t have that in their own countries. They sleep on the floor.
They are taken care of nicely there. But you know, yeah, they are not with parents, it’s sad. But when they come here alone or with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something.
Another portion of the call finds Mrs. Trump talking about how human smugglers coach border crossers on what to say once they arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to be put into asylum proceedings:
A lot of like moms and kids, they are teached how to do it. They go over and they say like, “Oh, we will be killed by a gang member, we will be, you know, it’s so dangerous.” So they are allowed to stay here.
…
It’s not true that they would, you know what I mean. Some of them they’re using that lines. They’re not professional, but they are teached by other people what to say to come over and to you know let them go to stay here. Because they could easily stay in Mexico, but they don’t want to stay in Mexico because Mexico doesn’t take care of them the same as America does.
In more of the call, Mrs. Trump can be heard hitting back at the media’s attacks on her for supporting her husband and not giving her credit for traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border to meet with trafficked migrant children.
Mrs. Trump rightfully notes in the call that the media was silent during the Obama-Biden years even as migrant children were filling up detention centers along the U.S.-Mexico border:
They say I’m complicit. I’m the same like him, I support him. I don’t say enough; I don’t do enough where I am. I’m working … my ass off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right? Correct?
…
OK, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas, and they said, “Oh, what about the children that they were separated?” Give me a fucking break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I can not go, I was trying get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn’t have a chance — needs to go through the process and through the law.
…
[The media] would not do the story. We put it out, they would not do the story. You would not believe it … They would not do the story because they, they, they are against us because they are liberal media. Yeah, if I go to Fox, they will do the story. I don’t want to go to Fox.
Then, in the final portion of the call, Mrs. Trump can be heard defending her fashion choice in wearing the now-famous jacket from Zara’s that read, “I really don’t care, do you?” As Breitbart News pointed out at the time, Mrs. Trump was trolling the media with the jacket.
“I’m driving liberals crazy, that’s for sure,” Mrs. Trump said of wearing the jacket. “And that, you know, that’s … they deserve it. You understand?”
“And everybody’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is worst, this is the worst.’ After, I mean come on,” Mrs. Trump said. “They are crazy, okay.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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