Secretly Recorded Tapes Reveal Melania Trump Cares a Lot About What Vogue Does
Credit: Getty Images
Melania Trump’s former advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff has released more audio tapes backing the content of her explosive tell-all book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady. Last week, Melania defended herself from these same tapes, which had already exposed her complaining about Christmas decorations and making serious claims about migrant children, calling them “out of context” and dismissing Wolkoff as having fabricated the closeness of their relationship. In new tapes released to NBC, Melania can now be heard reacting to Beyoncé’s Vogue issue in September 2018, a magazine known to be held in the highest regard by Melania herself.
Author Wolkoff has hinted before that those who grace the cover of Vogue (let alone design an entire issue) are a sore spot for Melania. The Trumps’ wedding coverage in 2005 had documented the peak of Melania’s ascent in NYC social life — and her failure to be offered the cover even once in her time as First Lady has raised many eyebrows since. Perhaps that’s why Melania sounded so surprised that Beyoncé was taking over an issue in 2018.
“Anna gave the September issue of Vogue cover — complete, complete, complete, everything — to Beyoncé,” Melania told Wolkoff. “So she will hire black photographer and it’s the first black photographer ever doing cover of Vogue.”
“What? That is insane,” Wolkoff replies.
“Well that’s what I read,” says Melania.
Obviously, there’s nothing insane to us about offering Beyoncé an issue of Vogue, but given Melania’s reaction to the magazine featuring Stormy Daniels that same year, she seemed to have different hopes for its creative direction. Once a friend of Anna Wintour’s and a regular at the Met Gala, Melania has since been disinvited along with her husband as the magazine embraced a new perspective, snubbing Melania’s assumed FLOTUS coverage in favor of other trailblazers.
These new tapes once again confirm that, when it comes to Melania Trump, Vogue is the fastest way to get her attention.
