EXCLUSIVE: Melania Trump's former friend reveals White House secrets | 60 Minutes Australia

just as the world has never experienced a united states president quite like donald trump we've not seen a first lady like melania trump despite being one of the most photographed women on the planet she remains virtually unknown even by her own husband it's been unkindly suggested tonight though that changes stephanie winston walkoff says she was besties with melania for 15 years because of that she was made a trusted advisor to the first lady and even helped organize donald trump's inauguration but then their friendship soured badly so what did stephanie do next well she wrote a tell-all book that really does tell all about melania and the donald [Music] for outsiders looking at the state of the union of donald and melania trump one thing seems obvious opposites attract trump he's big and brash we're gonna knock the [ __ ] out of isis she's poised petite and reserved melania trump is one of the most glamorous first ladies ever melania has been the first lady of the united states for almost four years but unlike her husband she's still a mystery melania does not want people to know who she is or what she's about and melania by remaining mysterious by keeping up that steel wall she doesn't have to answer to anyone stephanie winston walkoff is one of the very few to get close to the real melania trump as you'll see they're not friends now but for 15 years from the early 2000s they were inseparable more than anyone she understands that trump's complicated love this is not a typical typical marriage or a typical relationship they are there for one another they um have a reason for being together which is beyond anyone's comprehension um except for being able to present themselves in a way that she brings or she brought some humanity to the presidency it's easy to see how growing up as a young child in slovenia which was under communist rule at the time i always heard about an amazing place called america yes in many ways melania's story is the american dream [Music] at 26 she arrived in the u.s as a model and soon caught the eye of the ambitious and audacious donald trump when they married in 2005 melania became his third wife i was actually supposed to meet somebody else and there was this great supermodel sitting next to melania i was supposed to meet the supermodel and they were saying look there's so and so i said forget about her who's the one on the left and it was one you like him right away it was a great chemistry and energy all for you what he got out of it was arm candy a decade later she ends up with you know being the first united states of america yes can you picture yourself the first lady yes i would be very traditional like jackie kennedy but it's fair to say that jackie kennedy never looked like this at least not in public they were a little risky but nothing more than you see every year in sport illustrated stephanie winston walkoff says despite melania's significant exposure she's never been an open book and while she might not like donald's embarrassing faux pas grab him by the [ __ ] i could do anything he knows his wife will always stare the other way i was surprised because that is not the man that i know [Music] would you agree in public she she really looks happy if she is not unhappy she is complicit she is um no different than her husband what is their relationship i mean is it a marriage made in heaven with these two calculating people you know i mean i have been saying it's a transactional marriage and it is because i started to realize that everything they did had was was um strategic well what you're talking about is an incredibly cynical marriage but if she knew who she was marrying and she's happy with what she's got out of it where does that leave the public embarrassment stephanie you've got a woman who's married to this guy who has an affair with a playboy model and then a porn star and we're talking only weeks after his son is born and she's still recovering they were meant for each other what woman what what what what normal woman could actually handle that none for her it was just politics it's just liberal media it is what it is i know who i'm married certain things don't need to be explained with an explanation i mean those are her words he wanted the spotlight he's a showman and she was willing to do what she needed for her which was to stand by her side so all of these speculations about her heart and how she's feeling and melania and melania everyone should just stop because there's nothing there to feel [Music] she seems to have this habit of dodging donald's public displays of affection and we've seen that a number of times is that a little bit weird so i think what people are forgetting or missing is that donald and melania and the trump family um are masters of the dark and i think that whenever he needs something to distract away from something else melania plays a role in that and then all of a sudden everyone's talking about her hand swat which is to me she's literally again they are aligned in a way that everything is done for a reason nothing just happens ah you think that's on purpose 100 so there has to be again you have to understand who they are to understand what they're trying to do which is fleece the nation like which is completely make you think one thing because that machine behind them is so powerful i'm very strong people they don't really know me people think and talk about me the like oh melania oh poor melania don't feel sorry for me don't feel sorry for me i i can handle everything for years stephanie worked at vogue magazine in new york it was where she first met model melania they hit it off immediately melania and i our friendship was based on her ability to stay calm her ability to have the most general common sense it was a very you know our ideologies were not spoken about politics was not spoken about it was just the two of us and so i always felt great after i left seeing her i felt confident i felt assured i mean she really gave me that boost of um you know energy their friendship blossomed into a working relationship when melania became the first lady stephanie was announced as her senior advisor but as he's off in the way business and pleasure don't always mix and the friendship disintegrated stephanie is there still a tiny part of you that likes melania no not at all you knew this woman as a genuine friend for 15 odd years how could you get it so wrong i know i gave her the benefit of the doubt i wanted to believe coming up melania had no one i knew she was diving into a pool of sharks and how it all went well people did not like me asking questions politics and power is ivanka jealous of her stepmother inside a bloody white house stabbed me in the back and sliced me on the neck and threw me under the bus that's next on 60 minutes [Applause] when donald trump was sensationally elected president four years ago the new first lady melania turned to her close friend stephanie winston walkoff to help coordinate her husband's 100 million dollar inauguration stephanie's connections in the fashion world as well as years of experience producing new york's famous met gala made her the perfect choice for the job it was her first glimpse into the colliding worlds of the trump family and washington politics when i was first asked to um produce the inauguration i did so with honor as i was doing this i realized that melania had no one and i mean no one helping her and i was her friend for 15 years i was someone that she trusted and someone that she knew would watch out for her and when i saw what was going on during the presidential inauguration committee planning um i knew she was diving into a pool of sharks and then i needed to have her back because no one else would according to stephanie right from the start melania trump was pushed aside and often ignored it quickly became obvious there was a challenger for the role of first lady donald's daughter ivanka no one cared to take care of melania trump people were only interested in making sure that ivanka trump was taken care of is there normal communication between melania and ivanka do they ever just sit down and talk to each other in a room about what's happening that day not very often you know it used to be more cordial when the children were younger they did look up to melania um but now you know power does take its place and it holds a very critically important you know part of all of their being now and yet listen i ivanka just wanted to usurp the first lady her interests were her own it's what ivanka can get out of this for herself why is that is ivanka jealous of her stepmother or is melania just a bit bitter because she knows that ivanka is donald's favorite daughter melania's accepted the fact that and did accept the fact and she kept saying to me this is the way it's going to be why do you care so much and i kept banging my head against the wall because it's not just the way it should be but that's ironic isn't it because you're telling me you really wanted to make a difference a genuine difference and here you are working for a so-called friend of yours who seems like she just couldn't care less in the beginning she did care and that's the difference here's the thing she has succumbed to her stepdaughter's ability to squash her as the first lady to do anything effective to affect change um and she's just going to ride out this time and um that makes you complicit then if you're not you stand up and walk away so when people talk about this cold war between melania and ivanka it's over ivanka has won in my opinion yes if donald had to pick between you know branding ivanka or branding melania well he's already shown us who he's branded right and the fact that he's literally getting ivanka ready to become a president and already putting that in people's minds is just insane as melania trump's senior advisor stephanie winston walkoff occupied a privileged position for almost the first two years of donald trump's presidency but this forthright and opinionated woman was increasingly viewed as trouble [Music] i really had a lot of questions and people did not like me asking questions i was a problem um they wanted me out of the white house i was seen as being divisive because i wanted to help the first lady i was being seen as devices as melania told me people were jealous because i slept over i was being devised because i was so close to her and understood what she needed to do but also i had the experience to help her execute everything she that our country needed to do this [Music] like with so many other trump staffers tears were inevitable they came when an official investigation was launched into why the presidential inauguration stephanie had helped organize was so incredibly expensive information was leaked to the media and she was accused of pocketing 26 million dollars but instead of standing up for her her friend the first lady swiftly and publicly dumped her stephanie is adamant she was the victim of a political hit they said at one stage your company was paid 26 million u.s i mean that's about 34 35 million australian and then we heard that eventually you were only paid 480 000 i mean is that figure right that is right the 490 000. yes but that also included you know again planning the inauguration working for melania during the inaugural for free bringing all my relationships my contacts and working 24 7 for her and then also the year and a half at the white house did melania know about the money melania knew everything that i knew because we spoke about it all the time yes could she have defended you publicly if she had wanted to one billion percent however she said that due to the investigation she could not due to the fact that she was not a private citizen she could not and you know that that's a cop-out oh i know it's a cop-out and i have all the evidence to prove it's a cop-out which you are currently sharing with investigators which i'm currently sharing with investigators they destroyed my character once i'm not letting them do this again [Music] and not only is stephanie winston walkoff sharing what she knows with investigators she's also sharing it with the world again as with many other exes in the trump administration she's written a tell-all book [Music] donald and melania are said to be none too pleased i want to talk to you about the truth because the white house says that the first lady is angry with you because you overstated your relationship with her in order to write a book filled with falsehoods yes i've read that what did you expect them to say has the book got any falsehoods in it the book doesn't have one falsehood i can back up every single thing in this book by one or another way of transmission and i mean everything you secretly record melania trump i secretly recorded milan trump after i was accused of almost being i was accused of being a crim criminal activity he was no longer my friend i was thrown to the wolves are you suggesting that she took advantage of your trust hundred percent no doubt stabbed me in the back and sliced me on the neck and threw me under the bus what about your motivation for writing this book i needed to clear my head i needed clarity i i've been living in my house for three years i've gone out maybe a handful of times i have three children i'm sorry you okay they took my life away from me in a matter of seconds the life i built for myself and my children and my husband and my family was crushed by this this machine a false narrative and no one took any desire to even want to figure out what the truth was which was where's the rest of the money in the list of scandals that's defined this president's first term in office whether there's money missing from his inauguration celebrations probably doesn't rank that highly but stephanie winston walkoff says with an election to decide if donald trump receives a second term only weeks away it is vital to discover the truth there's something very interesting in the way that when you take a really big step back and you stop focusing on the um the moments um that you realize that america and people are just being played to and we're all on a reality show right now and we really are if donald trump loses in november what becomes of melania she'll be in the south of france on a really big yacht with a really big brim hat doing what she's always wanted to do nothing hello i'm liam bartlett thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the nine now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 4,473,044

Rating: 3.7690816 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liam Bartlett, stephanie winston wolkoff, stephanie wolkoff, stephanie winston, melania, melania trump, donald trump, exclusive, trump, melania and me, melanias best friend, former friend, white house, secrets, inside the white house, trump white house, former advisor, white house advisor, ivanka trump, ivanka president, president trump, trump 2020, election, vogue, met gala, trump interview, stephanie wolkoff interview, melania interview

Id: KNNLt38HE64

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I don't think a shot of the capital is very hard to get for a program like 60 minutes. It's the same idea but it looks like they just got their own shot instead did having to pay Netflix.

[u/JohntaviousWilliams]

That's not the same shot, although its similar