— 6 — White House–keeping

My forty-sixth birthday was the day after the swearing-in. Melania sent a beautiful white floral arrangement to my hotel room, and I was touched she had remembered with all that had been going on. I celebrated in DC with my family, mostly lying in bed; I could barely move.

The following morning, I gave them all giant hugs and kisses goodbye before they drove back to New York. I was staying in DC for the day. I headed over to the White House to meet with Melania. My life had been far from normal for months, and that wasn’t going to change in the foreseeable future.

Walk-Through

On Sunday, January 22, 2017, Melania and I walked through the deserted East Wing of the White House to see the First Lady’s offices and the Executive Residence, where Melania, Donald, and Barron—along with her parents and Daga, her loyal housekeeper from New York—were going to live. Donald would have to be alone there for a while yet. Much to the consternation of New Yorkers—they weren’t thrilled to foot the additional police bills—Melania wasn’t leaving Trump Tower in a hurry.

She was adamant that she wasn’t going to disrupt Barron’s life by uprooting him in the middle of a school year. For so many reasons, I couldn’t comprehend how she thought it was okay to stay in New York just because she wanted to. I said, “You’re going to have to move here as soon as possible. This isn’t about you anymore. It’s about our country.”

She looked at me and said, “I get it.”

The reality was, she understood just fine, but, as she explained to me, “I don’t care what people think. I will do what is right for me and Barron.”

I was pretty sure Melania had to put her hand under my chin and close my jaw. She was going to do right by herself, as expected. That was Melania’s way.

On the ground floor, we walked into the main White House kitchen. “So, this is where the magic happens,” I said.

The executive chef looked shocked to see us poking around by ourselves, but as soon as Melania said, “Hello, everybody,” a calm spread through the room, and everyone there smiled back.

I was in awe just being in the White House. I’d been in there before, on October 26, 1999, when I was the director of special events at Vogue. In the East Room, President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Anna Wintour hosted photographer Annie Leibovitz and writer Susan Sontag in honor of their collaboration of essays and photographs in Annie Leibovitz: Women, a companion catalog to an exhibition opening the next day at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. David and I, and my brothers, Gordon and Randall, posed for photos with the Clintons and had a wonderful time.

I hope the ghosts of presidents past don’t strike me down for saying it, but when Melania and I toured the place, my first thought was, What a dump! It looked shabby, tired. Everything was old and sad, from the furniture to the carpeting to the paint job. The rooms themselves were a mess. Mostly what the past administration had left us were a few dozen broken computers and keypads piled high at the entrance to Melania’s office. I was shocked.

I said, “Here we go again.” We’d have to start from scratch with no time and a limited budget, under intense scrutiny, to make it shine. Luckily, having worked hand in hand with Melania during the inauguration, David Monn and I were well prepared to transform her vision into a reality.

When we got to the Residence, Melania took one look at her bedroom off the West Sitting Hall and said, “I’m not moving to DC until the Residence has been renovated and redecorated, starting with a new shower and toilet.”

Gold plated?

She did not go so far as to say that she would not sit on the same throne as Michelle Obama or whoever had used this bathroom. It could have been the queen of England’s. But Melania did not conduct her most personal business on a previously used john.

On my ongoing mental list of housekeeping items, I added, Melania’s bedroom. New paint, new furniture, new everything. I knew Melania’s decorator, Tham Kannalikham, was in charge but until she arrived, Melania asked me to keep an eye on everything and report back.

After spending the day in the East Wing, taking notes on all that was required to get Melania’s office up and running, I walked over to the Executive Residence and ascended a winding staircase to the State Floor, where I joined the First Family for dinner in the Old Family Dining Room. At its center loomed a magnificent table, around which sat the Trump dynasty: Don Jr. and his wife, Vanessa; Eric and his wife, Lara; and Melania. Tiffany wasn’t there. Ivanka and Jared’s absence was noticeable, but I didn’t ask about their whereabouts. The president of the United States extended his arms when he saw me, as he always did, and said, “Hello, Stephanie! Isn’t this great? Look at this!” He gestured around the room with his hands. He was excited to be there and so was I. He said, “You did a great job on the inauguration!”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” I said.

I turned bright red. I’d known Donald forever, but seeing him felt different now. I mean, he was the president. After giving him a hug hello, I zigzagged around the table to Melania. We kiss-kissed, and I sat in the seat next to her she’d saved for me. On my other side was Lara, clutching her still-flat belly as she shared the news that she was pregnant. The dinner had a celebratory feel. I remember easy laughter, family unity, and feeling honored to be included in its intimacy.

The flight back to New York for the family—minus Donald, Ivanka, and Jared—was scheduled to leave in an hour. I was joining them. After dinner, we motorcaded to the plane and flew home along with Hervé, who was still riding the high of seeing his gown on the First Lady at the inaugural balls. He was bursting with ideas about what Melania could wear next. I felt the same excitement and sense of wonder and possibility.

Priority Number One

I reported for duty at Trump Tower early the next morning, ready to go over my housekeeping list with Melania, starting with the top item: hiring a highly qualified and experienced staff. I needed candidates for so many of the jobs I needed to fill—I’d been doing everything for her during the transition for months now, but Melania said, “Even you can’t do it alone.” You think?

Anna Wintour has always said that I’m a hard worker but not the best delegator, and that I need to learn how to trust other people to do their job so that I can do mine even better. I had a clear vision for the First Lady’s office, a Lincolnian team of rivals, a bipartisan group of smart, creative women who believed in transparency with the media and hard work.

Go big or go home. Melania’s initiative would have to be multipronged and nationwide. She kept saying, “Cyberbullying,” and I agreed that it had to be part of the program. But it was a symptom of a larger problem. You had to ask why such behaviors like cyberbullying were so prevalent in the first place. If kids were taught to deal with their emotions and express themselves freely from a young age, bullying in all forms would diminish. I’d read the evidence-based research on the subject. Our focus was on prevention instead of intervention. Plus, there was the obvious problem that a cyberbullying platform would be mocked and attacked because of Melania’s husband’s nonstop slinging of hostility and aggression on Twitter.

I didn’t harp on the initiative goals that first day. We were still on the basics: staff, roles, renovations, logistics, and how she envisioned things working.

During the inauguration, Melania had sent me an organizational chart for the First Lady’s office with dozens of slots to fill with important-sounding titles. She needed directors of policy and projects, communications, correspondence, scheduling, and advance, along with a social secretary, and deputies and assistants under each directorship. Michelle Obama’s staffers had received high five- to low six-figure salaries, enough money to keep them happily and gainfully employed.

During the transition, Melania gave me the go-ahead to start meeting people semi-secretly to try to get a staff ready for day one. The only person the RNC had assigned to Melania during that period, Marcia Lee Kelly, had practically begged to be Melania’s chief of staff. Melania forwarded Kelly’s overly flattering email, proving the point. We agreed Marcia wasn’t the right fit for her. During the inauguration, she didn’t seem to be good with follow-up, failed to send requested information, spelled names wrong, and made mistakes on guest lists. I couldn’t figure out if Marcia was not great with follow-through or if she was keeping information from me. Besides that, the Trumps are all about image, and Marcia’s attitude was a bit too rough to represent Melania. (Kelly is currently the president of the Republican National Committee.)

I didn’t mind being the acting chief of staff (COS) until we found the right person. Melania asked me on several occasions if I would consider taking the top job, but the COS was required to live in DC, and I wouldn’t leave my children and husband. Melania and I reviewed lists of candidates I’d already interviewed during the inauguration in my room at the Trump International Hotel. I started to jot down a list of names to fill the spots. I sent it back over to Katie Walsh, deputy to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in the West Wing, and she said, “Ignore that chart [the one Melania had sent]. I’m sending an updated one.”

The updated chart had a handful of positions, and only several of them came with a six-figure salary that would attract qualified people. The eliminated spots were deputies and assistants. Melania’s staff allotments were for directors only, at low salaries.

Walsh informed me that the West Wing had already used up the staffing budget and coveted titles by hiring an unprecedented number of assistants to the president (APs), special assistants to the president (SAPs), and deputy assistants to the president (DAPs). In other words, those that should have gone to the First Lady’s staff had already been allotted.

Melania wrote to and called Reince Priebus, requesting more information about her staffing budget and organizational chart, but answers were slow in coming. We didn’t know the extent of the protocol for hiring. East Wing candidates would have to go through a rigorous vetting process by the FBI, along with being approved by the West Wing. I couldn’t tell you which would take longer.

How was Melania supposed to pay salaries? Host events? Order stationery? Do the redecorating? With Melania ensconced in Trump Tower, it was up to me to get answers to these questions. She asked me to meet with Angella Reid, the chief usher. The chief usher is responsible for the care and maintenance of the Executive Residence, overseeing all of the White House’s support staff including the ushers, butlers, executive chefs, pastry chefs, stewards, curators, calligraphers, and floral designers—the people with whom Melania was going to share her home, “The People’s House,” in due time.

I’d first met Angella on January 22, when she kindly reached out to let me know she’d added my name to the WAVE (White House Worker and Visitor Entry System list), which granted me access to enter the White House for my meeting with Melania. She’d met me with a smile, and I was looking forward to working with her. Hired by the Obamas in 2011, she was the first woman to ever hold the position.

The next time we met, our meeting didn’t go as I’d expected. She said she “sensed a bit of frustration” when we chatted about budgets for the events. She got that right! I was hoping she’d share information from past administrations, but instead she wanted to give me a class in “record management,” telling me, “all administration records leave with the outgoing administration, so we don’t have copies of detailed event costs on hand.” I J.U.S.T. wanted someone to share the most basic information with me, like what I should be budgeting for any of the First Lady’s upcoming events.

The vibe I got from Reid was that we shouldn’t look to her to make things any easier on us. I could tell she was going to be a tough nut to crack. Melania said, “We can’t fire her yet. It’s too soon.” In other words, Make it work, for now.

I wanted to hire Jessica Boulanger as our press secretary/spokesperson. She was qualified, dignified, and respected, and we’d worked very well together during the inauguration. Melania agreed, and we put in a request to the West Wing’s Walsh and Priebus to offer her a competitive salary. Jessica already had a big communications job (executive vice president of public affairs at Business Roundtable), and patriotic duty might not be enough to lure her to the East Wing full-time. Diddly was left for the First Lady’s office, and there was no way we could come close to offering Jessica what she deserved. I offered her the most we had available, and she politely declined. I felt defeated that day; Melania was none too pleased either. With no budget, how were we going to assemble our dream team?

Still, I wasn’t going to let Jessica’s loss, my increasingly brutal neck pain, and my ignorance about protocol dishearten me. Ivanka had quickly hired her staff, including Goldman Sachs’s Dina Powell. We were off to a slow start. Previous administrations had shown up with full staffs, raring to go. We had me.

Full of piss and vinegar—and a bottle of migraine meds—I showed up the next morning in “tippy-top” shape, as Melania loved to say, sleeves rolled up, ready to make the East Wing a beautiful, inspirational space in which to do great things with qualified and decent people.

On our paltry organizational chart, my name filled the top box as chief strategist and senior advisor. The COS would be below me. It was widely known inside and outside the White House that I was Melania’s go-to girl. On January 20, Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) reported that I’d helped Melania with her inaugural wardrobe and called me the “senior adviser to the First Lady.” On January 26, The Washington Post referred to me as her “adviser.” Rachel Roy reached out to me: “Yay!!! MK told me about your position!!! Best news EVER!!!! You & MK will make the best team and change the course of history!!!”

Melania trusted me to choose her COS and said, “You’ll hire the right person,” but technically, I wasn’t really hiring anyone. Only Melania had the power to pick up the phone and say, “I want that one.” I was responsible for finding that person. Although I was allowed to sleep on the third floor, right above the president’s and Melania’s rooms, and walk around the Executive Residence unescorted, I didn’t have an access pass to get my work done for the First Lady, and had to be checked in every time I entered the building. I also didn’t have the clearance to meet potential candidates in the East Wing. If that’s not maddeningly counterproductive, then I don’t know what is.

So, I would pack up my bags, order an Uber, and ride over to the Trump International Hotel. I’d meet the candidate in the lobby bar, where I paid for the beverages and food. Many times, when I needed to be covert, I’d invite them into my room at the hotel, which I also paid for (at a friends and family discounted rate), and offer them something from the minibar, a box of gummy bears or M&M’s. Between the hotel room and the snacks, it added up to thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.

For Melania’s chief of staff, I brought back Lindsay Reynolds, the same woman who’d been canned from the PIC by Rick and Tom after I accidently unearthed her three-ring binder containing critical information from past inaugurals that we’d been requesting, which could have saved us hundreds of hours and probably thousands of dollars, as we had had to start from scratch trying to re-create them. So why did I recommend her to Melania for this important post? Our options were severely limited; and frankly, we were desperate. No one—and I mean no one—I’d ever worked with in New York would even pick up the phone.

Lindsay made mistakes on the PIC but she did have White House experience, having run the Visitors Office for the George W. Bush administration, under the purview of the East Wing. How was I supposed to arrange tours? I didn’t even know where the bathrooms were.

Since Lindsay had been a third-grade teacher, I thought she’d be a valuable resource when it was time to launch Melania’s initiative about children. From her RNC days, Lindsay knew Katie Walsh and Reince Priebus, but she didn’t seem to have a deep connection to them. In fact, when my email about bringing Lindsay to the East Wing went around, Katie Walsh was taken aback. If Katie didn’t like her, then I loved her.

Unlike me, politics ran through Lindsay’s veins. Her husband’s father was an ambassador, and I could imagine the embarrassment brought upon her family after she’d been fired from the PIC. But during the planning of the inauguration, she too had been outraged by Ivanka’s requests, as if she’d just become First Lady. I was willing to take my chances. She seemed like the perfect mother hen, which resonated with me, and that’s all I really thought Melania needed at the time. Someone to watch over the roost. So, I was willing to turn a blind eye to her lack of judgment and give her the benefit of the doubt.

When I called her to see if she’d consider the role, she was so taken aback, she had to place her Target shopping bags down curbside and register our conversation. Lindsay was willing to commute to DC from Cincinnati and see her husband and kids only on the weekends. That showed a sense of duty that I admired. Lindsay was on board with reporting to me, even though she would be COS. It was an unorthodox arrangement, but so was the entire Trump administration. She’d witnessed my relationship with Melania and knew all the work I’d done for her. We offered her a salary of $179,000, which she accepted. (This was the salary initially offered to me.)

I’d been given an AP title, higher than an SAP or DAP. All three categories came with salaries and access parameters. Since the East Wing was granted only one AP title—with a salary of $179,000.00 because the West Wing had taken all the others—and Lindsay needed access, what was I supposed to do?

Katie Walsh suggested to me, “Well, we can make your AP an honorary one, and when someone leaves or gets fired from the West Wing, we can move it over to you.”

I gave my AP title to Lindsay. Without it, she wouldn’t have been able to attend daily senior staff briefings. We’d have to make do with SAP and DAP titles for whoever else came in. Apparently, possessing quality, experience, and expertise were not a consideration to represent the First Lady’s office. The focus was on quantity—the fewer the better.

Lindsay told me she almost didn’t answer her phone that day when I called. I was happy when she got there. I wasn’t totally alone.

Space Wars

Those Obama pranksters. When Lindsay arrived and hung her coat on the hook on the back of her office door, it fell to the floor. The screws had been loosened. The next day, the head of security and a deputy came to the East Wing to see us and to apologize for the fact that they couldn’t replace the red high-security phone in Lindsay’s office with a pink one. Lindsay and I had no idea what they were talking about. He said, “We got a call that Mrs. Trump requested a pink phone.”

It would have been a more clever prank if they’d said Mrs. Trump wanted a gold phone. Duh.

The only East Wing offices that were currently occupied and functioning were the Calligraphy Office and the Military Office. Patricia “Pat” Blair, the White House chief calligrapher, was the first person to welcome me in the building. I was grateful to her for helping us with the transition by providing us with some key information on past events that no one else seemed to know anything about or be willing to share information on.

Office supplies? Apart from the pile of broken computers? Zilch. There wasn’t a piece of paper, a schedule, a pen, a paper clip, a stapler, a notepad, or a contact sheet to be found. Since I happen to carry a portable office in my shoulder bag—it weighs twenty pounds and had to be one of the reasons my neck pain was so debilitating—I was a walking office supply store. I had pens and notebooks on me at all times.

Media reports that the East Wing was a dark, lonely, sad, cobwebbed place started popping up in the press. We suspected Ivanka immediately. According to Vicky Ward’s book Kushner, Inc., Ivanka had said during the transition that the First Lady’s office would become, under Daddy’s administration, the “Trump Family Office.” In late January, when only Lindsay and I occupied Melania’s space, Lindsay got an alert that members of Jared’s staff were coming to the East Wing to look over our offices. The West Wing wasn’t big enough for the Kushners. They wanted the East Wing as well.

I called Melania to tell her what was going on and she said, “This is ridiculous! You have to do something!”

I dug into my bag; pulled out my red Sharpie and yellow Post-it notes; scribbled “conference room,” “chief of staff,” “deputy of advance,” etc., on them; and slapped them on the office doors.

By putting our mark on each office, Jared’s people couldn’t very well say, “Well, if no one’s using it… we’ll take it.”

I blocked those offices with my body. Although I didn’t yet have a contract to serve as Melania’s advisor, I was pretty sure “linebacker” would not be in my job description.

People to Meet, Slots to Fill

About that contract… it was in the hands of lawyers, where it would remain for months. Journalists I’d known and worked with for decades asked constantly about my title and duties. Their guesses were as good as mine. I’d been her eyes and ears throughout, and now I’d agreed to be her as-yet-uncontracted, unpaid senior advisor and chief strategist. Privately, these reporters told me they disapproved of my loyalty to the Trumps, but they respected the work I was doing. I didn’t tell Melania every time a reporter asked me, “But why in the living hell are you working for the Trumps?” She never doubted my loyalty for a minute. And why would she? I’d given up my career to work on the PIC and given up all partnerships. I stuck around despite what I’d seen from Trump cronies on the PIC, despite friends urging me to run (not walk) away from Trump World. But if I left, Melania would have no one looking out for her. Ivanka would steamroll her. Donald would probably prefer his wife to do nothing but inflate his ego and raise their son. The number of people who could see the possibilities about Melania’s potential as First Lady could be counted on one hand: Melania, me, our friends Pamela Gross and Rachel Roy, and Lindsay, maybe.

We needed more people on our side.

I’d corralled Vanessa Schneider, who not only worked with me during the inauguration but also in New York during Fashion Week, with a mid-five-figures offer, as well as my cousin Devon Weiss. The only way I was able to beef up salaries was by giving up my own.

Devon, a graduate of Georgetown University with an MBA and a Master of Science in Foreign Science, was bright and ambitious and had worked for me during the PIC. During our weeks together on the PIC, I had been up to my neck in the ineptitude and frenetic activity that had been swirling around us. Devon had tried hard to problem-solve, but I was so frustrated, and I lashed out at her because I could; she was family. Throughout, she held her head up high.

Somehow, I convinced her to stay on in the First Lady’s office. Even though I’d been really tough on her, she said yes, feeling a sense of patriotism. (It must run in the family.) We needed Devon. I trusted her and so could Melania. With her experience and education, she was qualified for the director of policy and projects position, with an SAP title. Understanding Melania’s dire situation, she also agreed to have a dual role, as personal aide to the First Lady.

Tim Tripepi, RNCer, PIC’s deputy director to Ryan Price for the outdoor events, and formerly lead advance for DJT, had become my inside guy during the inauguration and shared information with me and WIS that we’d otherwise not have been privy to, giving us the big picture. He was well aware I was interviewing candidates for the East Wing, so he approached me about being lead advance and operations for the First Lady. I didn’t even know what that meant, so I listened to him. It meant that when Melania was traveling, he’d be in charge of setting things up for her in advance of her arrival.

I was suspicious of everyone from the PIC and the RNC, and Tim fell into both categories. But Tim flat-out worshipped Melania, which went a long way with me. He convinced me he would do right by her. As I said, we were desperate, and he had experience in operations and as an advance man. In retrospect, I would have preferred to hire Mary-Kate Fisher, who served as an event manager at the PIC, but I didn’t get to know her until after the inauguration, after Tim suggested I meet with her to hire her as his deputy. He was spot-on about her! I was thrilled when she accepted to be deputy director of advance in the office of First Lady Melania Trump.

Tim had been a valuable part of the PIC team, but he got off on the wrong foot at the East Wing by being demanding about his title, and agitating for more money and more staff. He said, “The White House manual states that FLOTUS is allowed three [advance staff] at each stop, a lead, a site, and a press lead.”

I told him, “I will need to meet, and Mrs. Trump will need to approve, all the candidates. We are also reviewing the number of staff required.” He agreed to the title deputy chief of staff for operations for the First Lady. There was no budget for me to receive a salary, but it still wasn’t enough. To pay Tim what he needed, and to hire another staff person, I asked Devon to give back a portion of her salary, as well as her SAP title. It was robbing Peter to pay Paul. It wasn’t fair, but Melania was only given three senior level positions (SAP titles).

Melania told me to meet with Katie Walsh to request a couple more senior-level positions. Katie had the audacity to tell me she was “working seamlessly to ensure that the president and first lady have the support they need.” Was she kidding me? The West Wing’s ego-centered self-serving attitude and disrespect for the First Lady was astounding.

Basically, the First Lady got what she got, and she’d have to wait until April for the new budget to even think about hiring anyone else.

She then told me, “We’ll be able to reimburse you through the RNC for all of your expenses.” I had spent thousands in Ubers, meals, and hotel charges. I wasn’t sure if that was legit, and the RNC was the last group that I wanted to take anything from, so I told Melania, “I’d rather take nothing from them.” She asked, “Are you sure?” I ate those expenses.

After my meeting with Katie, I told Devon that Walsh had promised to bump her back up when we had a new budget in a couple of months. Devon quit instead, and I didn’t blame her. In hindsight, it was a brilliant move.

One of our support staffers, a woman I’ll call Abby—the only pseudonym in this book, by the way—hit a snag during the FBI background checks process. I’d been through it, and it felt like a full-body flossing. The FBI asked her if she’d ever smoked pot. Abby said, “Yes. Just once.” Security came and took her away. So then everyone started asking whether they should lie on the background checks. Apparently, if you want a White House job and the FBI asks if you ever got high in college twenty years ago, your answer should be no. Abby came to my hotel room that evening in tears. I had no words! Another one bites the dust.

I continued to meet candidates in secret for other high-level spots. Lindsay was out of the loop. Just trying to help, she sent a long list of candidates to Melania and me. But FLOTUS was in circle-the-wagons mode and said, “Don’t let Lindsay hire anyone. Until it is approved by you and then me, no one can get a position in the office.”

I sent Lindsay an email on January 27 that said, “As I have expressed, we have a few other people in mind that Mrs. Trump and I have already interviewed and that she likes. We must handle this very carefully and not have any sidebar conversations with possible staff as no one should be considered until you and I have spoken. Mrs. Trump cares very much that her messaging is kept internal and we do not want staff discussing possible positions that do not even exist or ones that they would not be considered for. I must meet and approve everyone considered and then we can see if it’s appropriate to meet with Mrs. Trump.”

Lindsay probably read my email and said, “Fuck you, Stephanie!” to the screen. But I’d been given instructions by the First Lady, and I followed through. How could Lindsay possibly know what Melania wanted? And why would Melania trust her judgment? They hadn’t even met yet.

Meanwhile, those highly qualified candidates I was meeting in secret? We had so little to offer them, they turned us down. Or the West Wing’s vetting process dragged on so long, they lost interest. Or they were rejected outright. Or they went to work in the West Wing.

Melania told Priebus it was unacceptable that she’d lost out due to budgetary issues and West Wing politicking. To create a bipartisan “no policy, no politics” staff and create her initiative, we needed more money and faster approval.

“Write what I should send to Reince today?” Melania requested.

I drafted a short message. We really weren’t asking for the moon. Just enough to bring in one or two excellent, experienced people. Was that too much to ask for the First Lady of the United States? It felt like they wanted to keep the East Wing offices empty, as if the budget and vetting process was being used like a weapon to prevent Melania from filling them. They seemed to enjoy disenfranchising the East Wing so they could totally control Melania. Ivanka was relentless and was determined to be the First Daughter Lady and to usurp office space out from under Melania; she wanted to be the only visible female Trump on the premises, and she was actively using her influence with Katie Walsh, Reince Priebus, and Hope Hicks to thwart our efforts.

Ivanka wasn’t playing by the rules, but she never, ever got in trouble. On January 24, Suzie Mills, Ivanka’s assistant at the Trump Organization, sent an email to her entire mailing list that said, “Hi Everyone, Hope you all are well. On behalf of Ivanka Trump, I will like to share her new email address. Effective immediately Ivanka will no longer be using her Trump Organization email address.” The new email used a family domain. Not a government one.

Can you say “private server”?

Ivanka was asking her work contacts at the White House to write to her at her private email—the exact offense the Trumps had lambasted Hillary Clinton for during the general election. Would anyone chant “Lock her up!” about Ivanka’s private server? Doubtful. The email thing was hypocritical, to say the least. But the Trumps made their own rules.

Paint the Wall

Vogue reached out to Melania, hoping to schedule an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot of the First Lady in the White House, with writer Rob Haskell shadowing her for a few days to write a profile. All that sounded great, but the magazine could not guarantee that Melania would appear on the cover.

For the record, not all First Ladies are put on the cover of Vogue. Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, yes. Laura and Barbara Bush, no. Melania wasn’t going to do anything for Vogue or any other magazine if she wasn’t going to be on the cover. “Give me a break!” she texted. “Forget it.”

To add insult to injury, Melania told me, “Ivanka is trying to get the White House photo shoot and profile.”

I’d heard as much from my sources and told Melania, “She’s angling for the cover!”

It never happened.

Interior decorator Tham Kannalikham was on her way to DC with colors and swatches that Melania had approved. I couldn’t wait for her to arrive and whip this place into shape. She wouldn’t have much to work with from the existing materials. We’d received a list from the General Services Administration (GSA) of the furniture inventory to choose from, excluding what was currently being used:

Large wingback chairs (not matching), 2

Small wingback chairs, 2

Fabric-back chairs, 2 sets of 2

Settee, 1

If we were lucky, we might be able to pull a three-seater sofa with the settee’s fabric from another office.

But that was the least of our worries. Since Tham wasn’t yet in DC, I tried to hold down the fort until she arrived. Talk about things going awry! One day Lindsay popped into my office and said, “They painted Melania’s office; it’s so beautiful. Come and see.”

When I opened the door I felt like I’d been sucked inside a cotton candy machine. “It’s so pink!” I said. “Was this another joke?” Nope!

I FaceTimed Melania so she could see it for herself. “That’s the color Tham and I chose,” she said. “Farrow & Ball, Dorset, England, Middleton Pink.”

“It really doesn’t work, Melania,” I told her. “You won’t be able to host meetings in here.” But she wasn’t planning on bringing any of her guests to the East Wing offices very often. She told me she’d use the Map Room, Red Room or Blue Room, or any of the other Executive Residence Rooms instead; “So much nicer,” she said.

That wasn’t the only issue. The GSA was busy and had no budget to spare for the First Lady at the time, and the Stark carpet they’d installed had a seam running right down the middle. Tham would have to spin straw into gold—or a nice shade of ivory—but if anyone could do it, she could.

Fortunately, the FLOTUS suite of offices wasn’t huge. Melania wanted my office right next to hers, and the chief of staff at the other end of the hallway, “So you can keep an eye on all the staff,” she said. Lindsay on one end, and me on the other.

Housekeeping item #47: Check the ivory paint in Melania’s bedroom now that it was dry.

I reeled back and gasped. “Chief Usher Angella Reid!” I yelled. “Someone splattered two patches of paint on Melania’s bedroom walls.”

Much to my disbelief, she replied, “I was told the president wanted to see some deeper tones.” Oh my, I thought to myself, and texted Tham. “Please hold off on the curtains for MT bedroom,” I wrote. “Will need to redo all.”

This wasn’t Donald’s bedroom, though. It was Melania’s, and she liked the color she had chosen. The paint job was finished! And now the whole bedroom needed to be redone. This job was like bashing my head into a wall. Why was I doing this?

I texted Melania a photo of the wall with the two dark splotches on it.

She wrote back, “What is that? Call me.”

I was far more upset than she was. She was like the Buddha, completely composed while I was freaking out. I tried to channel some of her inexplicable calm… and succeeded.

I had to choose my battles, and this wasn’t one of them. Her bedroom had to be repainted with a darker hue, but at least she was thrilled with her Middleton Pink dressing room and the built-ins going inside of her dressing room doors. Disaster averted.

Rachel checked in, and when she heard this story, she was livid. She said, “What are these reports of MT & DT sleeping in separate rooms? ALL PRESIDENTS have separate rooms, why wasn’t this a story then? Such bull!!!”

I agreed.

Housekeeping item #48: Get someone to test the soil in the White House gardens. Someone told Melania there might be “something wrong with it.”

Housekeeping item #87: Per Melania, put her glam squad—Nicole Bryl (makeup), Mordechai Alvow (hair), and Hervé Pierre (wardrobe)—on notice about not speaking to the press without her prior approval. The week before, Bryl, Melania’s makeup artist of ten years, had told Us Weekly, “There will absolutely be a room [in the White House] designated for hair, makeup and wardrobe. Melania wants a room with the most perfect lighting scenario, which will make our jobs as a creative team that much more efficient, since great lighting can make or break any look. [It takes] about one hour and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted focus. If you want the look to be flawless and have it last [throughout the day], you do have to take a little extra time to make that happen.”

Gerald Ford had built an outdoor swimming pool for the White House. Nixon had put in a bowling alley. Obama had installed a basketball hoop. In March 2020, the Trumps started building a tennis pavilion. Melania wanted a glam room. Was that so far-fetched? The trouble was, it played into the narrative of her being a beautiful empty vessel. Even her husband reinforced the impression every time he said, “Isn’t she beautiful?!”

She wanted a glam room; she got one. And she made good use of it. I watched her from a neighboring chair get her hair blown out and styled. She never varied from the same style. Not long after she became First Lady, André Leon Talley told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, “I am so tired of the long hair falling on both sides of her face. She has to upgrade her coiffure. She’s very much like a high, super, superglamorous Stepford Wife.”

Her hair had taken a beating over the last couple of years, with her appearing in public more than ever. She told me, “My hair is getting really dry.” It did look brittle and alarmingly thin.

Melania had to control her image in the press, of course, and Bryl’s blabbing about the glam room was a misstep. But forbidding her makeup, hair, and wardrobe people from speaking publicly about their work didn’t feel right. Nonetheless, I sent a letter to each of them. “On behalf of the First Lady’s Office, we wish to inform you that all services rendered are private and confidential,” it said. “The Office of the First Lady kindly asks for your respect in maintaining complete privacy and not divulging any information about her, the First Family or the work you have performed. Any press requests must be formally submitted to and approved by the Office of the First Lady.”

So, in Melania’s first week as First Lady, she and I dealt with the photographer, makeup artist, hairstylist, fashion stylist, wrapping paper, stationery, and decorator. My housekeeping items list was getting shorter, but it was still a mile long, and I continued to be hamstrung by protocol.

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 West Wing’s modus operandi, to ask Melania to drop everything at the last minute—for her, that means four days’ warning—and jump this high whenever they called. She was not given access to her husband’s schedule and was always the last to know about where he was and what he was doing.

It had been going on since the campaign, and she was sick and tired of it.

“I am going to let them know how it needs to be moving forward,” I promised, not sure what I could do other than make requests. It was chaos over there. I had no control. Any power she could generate was muffled by her being in New York, so I had to fight her battles by myself, without a phone, email, contract, or badge.

Melania did intend to leave Trump Tower the following weekend, February 3 to 5, to go to what the press was calling the “Winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, for the Sixtieth International Red Cross Ball. “Find out if Donald is going?” she asked. She was so out of the loop, she didn’t know what Donald was doing. She couldn’t ask him because he didn’t control his schedule either.

She said, “I’m traveling alone. Want to come?”

Er, no, thanks. I wanted to go home to my family.

Then I heard from Rachel. “Morning! I want to plan a tea at the WH celebrating MK our FLOTUS, her sister, her mother/father, only like 10 people or less, a true intimate party to toast the historical moment she is living in! I thought I would hire a children’s choir and have a tea since she does not drink, just simple and sweet??? Thoughts?”

Was she kidding me? Nope! So I told her, “I would love to plan, but we should wait. I’ll explain when we talk.”

Social Anxiety

My last meeting of my first grueling, awesome, panic-filled week in the White House was with Katie Walsh to discuss our anemic organization and salary limitations. From Walsh’s email summons, I got the idea that I was supposed to feel a sense of privilege that the doors of the West Wing were being flung open to me. I’d been granted permission to walk the hallowed halls, to tread on the same carpets as luminaries like Ivanka and Jared, to breathe the same rarefied oxygen as Hope Hicks and Sean Spicer.

I’d have to mark my calendar: this was a super-special day.

Look, interviewing staff and setting up Melania’s office was my job. To do it, I had to walk from one place to the other, so I needed a pass. I absolutely considered it a privilege to work in the White House, but Katie’s condescension sucked the joy out of it. At the meeting, which was delayed (I kept checking my watch repeatedly because I had a flight to New York to catch), Katie explained in detail why we were so limited and that, at this point, the only big slot we could still fill was social secretary. I walked out of there shell-shocked. How in the world would we be able to do anything with so little support?

(PS: I missed my plane.)

Melania’s emoji finger must have blistered from all the .

My top choice for social secretary was Natalie Jones, former deputy chief of protocol for the Obama administration, once the finance director at the Democratic National Committee and a high-level staffer on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. I met with her for the first time on January 26, 2017, at six p.m. at the Trump International Hotel.

The only reason she’d agreed to meet with me in the first place was because of our shared friendship with David Monn. The job was to plan and coordinate all official and social events for the president and the First Lady, including state dinners, the Easter Egg Roll, the White House Christmas Party, and many, many (so many) more.

David told me I’d love Natalie, and she was perfect! As soon as she left my hotel room that evening, I called Melania and said, “We hit the jackpot!”

Natalie and Melania met face-to-face the following day, and their mutual appreciation was obvious. “I had a very nice meeting with Mrs. Trump,” wrote Natalie. “She is everything you described.”

I told Melania, “We must hire her!!!”

Melania and I had a quick confab and then offered Natalie the job.

“I need a day,” said Natalie. After she slept on it, she accepted, with a few requests. Finally, someone worthy of the job! I began lobbying the West Wing for a fast vetting, more money, and an AP title. Our budget and the title available to us at that point would have been inappropriate and downright insulting for a woman with her experience.

On January 29, 2017, I emailed Melania in the morning with the subject “Social Secretary note for Reince Priebus from you.” I wrote out exactly what she should send to Priebus: “I offered the Social Secretary job to Natalie Jones. She comes highly qualified and would be a great asset to my team. She needs a DAP title and Social Secretary salary of $150,000. Résumé attached. Thank you, Melania.”

I added, “PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU SEND. THEY ARE GOING TO TELL YOU THAT YOU DON’T HAVE THAT BUDGET! You will need to explain that they must find the budgets for your top people.”

Jones was a Democrat, so, in my mind, she would bring balance to the First Lady’s office. Party politics didn’t really come into play in the position anyway. Plus, she was eminently qualified. I was beyond thrilled, imagining our working together, doing our country proud.

On January 30, 2017, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, then the White House deputy press secretary, sent a press release over to the East Wing to be approved by Melania announcing Lindsay, and cc’ing Katie Walsh and Reince Priebus.

First Lady Melania Trump Announces White House Staff:

WASHINGTON—First Lady Melania Trump today made the following announcement in regard to White House Staff additions at the Office of the First Lady:

“It has been humbling to take on the responsibility of the position of First Lady, with its long history as an important representative of the President, his family, and the traditions of our nation around the world,” said First Lady Trump. “I am honored to be bringing on such a professional and highly experienced team, and I look forward to joining with them as we work together to make our country better for everyone.”

The additions to White House Staff are as follows:

Melania zoomed right into the word humbling and told me, “Humbling? I would say honor.”

Katie held it back.

On February 1, 2017, in the late afternoon, Natalie texted, “Please call me ASAP.”

“I’m slammed,” I replied. I didn’t tell her that I was busy begging for money for her.

“I just want to make sure you are aware of the Washington Post article,” she said. I found it online. The piece went on for several paragraphs about Jones’s Democratic credentials and how liberal DC was shocked she’d even consider the job. David Monn was mentioned. My name was mentioned, too, in the context of my efforts to staff the First Lady’s office.

Melania texted me, “Donald said Reince asked him if I am sure I want to hire a Democrat.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told him I need expertise and if she is okay to work for us, I am okay.”

Yes! Melania had put her stiletto down! A qualified and dignified human being would be joining the East Wing. I did a small happy dance.

Reince’s response six hours later was, “Hire your person within reason,” and he told Melania, “I do have a slight concern about a Hillary Clinton and DNC employee being on the list.”

Melania and I were exasperated.

“If you are getting pressure to look at other candidates, I understand,” Natalie texted. “But it may be foreshadowing that this is not meant to be.”

The White House wanted “the best people,” but not the most qualified or intelligent? In order to be best (hmmm, that phrase had a nice ring to it), our candidates only needed to be one thing: Donald Trump loyalists.

I was a Melania Trump loyalist. I wondered how long I’d last in this environment. It wasn’t like anyone was trying to lock me down; my contract languished in red tape.

Emily Heil with the Washington Post contacted our office for a confirmation or comment about Natalie Jones’s declining the social secretary job. Natalie saying that she had declined protected Melania from further embarrassment.

Natalie Jones is a class act. If we’d been allowed to hire her, she would have done incredible things in the role. But the West Wing wouldn’t allow it.

Now that we’d publicly stated that we had several qualified, enthusiastic candidates for social secretary, we had to scramble to fill the spot. The truth: there was no pool of candidates. But I’d had Anna Cristina “Rickie” Niceta Lloyd in the back of my mind from the beginning. I’d gotten to know Rickie on the PIC; she was one of the few people I respected and trusted. She’d worked for Design Cuisine, the DC catering and design company, and labored alongside David Monn on the Candlelight Dinner and the Chairman’s Global Dinner and every other event, along with her assistant, Emily Biddle. I knew them both to be hard workers with good attitudes. They could do the job. Rickie would need a deputy and they made a great duo working on the inauguration. They both appreciated that I’d thought it through to consider them both.

Rickie was married to the grandson of the late Bunny Mellon. Bunny had been a friend and mentor to Jacqueline Kennedy; they had designed the White House Rose Garden together. The connection checked the “central casting” box.

We were really under the gun to hire someone. The Governors’ Dinner was a couple of weeks away. I knew it wouldn’t look good for Melania to not have her social secretary position officially staffed before her coming-out.

The White House florist, Hedieh Ghaffarian, gave me an envelope with two fabric swatches and pictures of floral arrangements. I showed them to Melania in Trump Tower when I went back to New York.

I just knew what Melania was going to say, but I wanted her to see for herself.

She looked at the swatches, looked at me, and said, “Nope!”

I heard that David Monn signed a contractor agreement with the East Wing to work on specific projects for an allotted amount of time, and I was pleased for him. I was working on everything with no “event” parameters, so a contract like his—one with access and a proper salary—wasn’t an option for me. That’s the excuse I was given.

Working together, David and I prepared two vision boards with two different sets of color schemes, table linens, floral arrangements, and china. Two days later, I was back at the penthouse, showing them to Melania. “This one or that one?” I asked. David had the yarn spinning, and later that day we flew back to DC.

David wanted the White House to represent Melania in every way, to touch all five senses with Melania’s colors, scent, music, fabrics, and flavors. There was a ton to do and we needed help ASAP. He agreed that Rickie was a great option.

I sent Melania Rickie’s résumé and some photos of her, telling her, “Feels so right!!! She is the perfect person. Her background is ideal. I loved working with her. You will love her!”

Melania liked what she saw. She said, “Let’s move with Rickie.”

Another hire of hers based on my recommendation, sight unseen. Rickie sailed through approval with the West Wing, and we announced officially soon after. And with that, our meager slots were full, except for a communications director.

Pink Cookies

Lindsay, Vanessa Schneider, and I called a meeting with the White House staff. I remember walking into the East Wing dining room and finding the butler, ushers, chefs, and florists seated on one side of a long table. The head butler, William “Buddy” Carter, had been at the White House since the first Bush administration, and it was obvious from his frown that he wasn’t a Trump enthusiast. From the look of it, they all distrusted us. Many of them had been hired by the Clintons, Bushes, or Obamas, all enemies of the Trumps. They probably assumed that anyone associated with the family had to be as offensive as Donald.

We sat down at the other side of the table and introduced ourselves. They followed in turn, barely getting their names out. We just wanted to meet them and understand how things worked. But this wasn’t going to be easy. We didn’t know anything and started asking questions. How many events did they typically do per week? How many people were available? What were their individual roles? When we were planning the Governors’ Dinner, how did we coordinate the menu?

They answered our questions tersely, coldly. It was a tough room. On our request, the kitchen staff brought out some cookies for us to sample, and as delicious as they were, they weren’t exactly the kind of desserts that Melania would go for.

I walked out of there worried for Melania having to live in a house where everyone in it despised her by proxy. Since I was spending more time there than Melania was, I felt the chill up close and personal.

Housekeeping item #208: Hire a food taster for Melania?

On January 28, FLOTUS texted to ask me how my day went.

Now, mind you, it was ten o’clock in the evening. I was finally in my own bed in New York. I’d climbed figurative mountains for Melania all week and my neck had been in throbbing pain all day. I couldn’t allow myself to even think about an honest reply or I would have burst into tears. Instead, I asked back, “How was yours?”

“Unpacking from last week,” she said. “A lot to do.”

Unpacking? I thought. A lot to do?

She wanted to know how the kids and David were doing and urged me to get some rest and to have some “peaceful time” with them.

I sent her a long string of and and wrote, “Hope that answers it! I am laughing at myself!”

She signed off with “Love you ”

And I replied “Love you too ”

We exchanged s, s, and s all day every day, and it felt intimate and close. The sentiments were real. But how could she tell me to have peaceful time with my family—her self-care mantra was “Schedule it!”—when she knew I was running myself ragged for her and there was too much to deal with to drop everything and relax? Was she just not thinking, or didn’t she notice? Or maybe she just didn’t care?

I’d been hauling myself between the Trump International Hotel in DC, the White House, and New York on repeat, lugging heavy bags wherever I went, for more than two months now. I was getting analgesic shots and sleeping pills because the pain in my neck was so severe, it was impossible to nod off otherwise.

The opportunity cost to me for working on the inauguration and in the White House was that I had to give up all the partnerships and investments I was working on so there would be no perception that I might be trying to profit from my relationships.

My press release at the White House continued to be delayed. I was notified on February 7 that the lawyers also wanted my husband to disclose his full financial statements. David said no and explained, “I don’t want my financial information to be public record,” and I understood. The president won’t even make his tax returns public. This sent the lawyers back to square one with my contract. With the background checks, unreasonable demands, lack of access, and West Wing’s disapproval about pretty much everything, the East Wing was both disturbingly empty and suffocating.

With no salary or acknowledgment of a definitive position, I had to wonder if I should continue. David wanted me to quit. But if I did, Melania would be at the mercy of the West Wing. She’d become a laughingstock or irrelevant, and I’d waste the greatest opportunity I’d ever had to help her. I had to psych myself up and remember that with Melania’s enthusiasm and participation, her platform and the right initiative, we could effect real, positive change. Look at what Michelle Obama had done with Let’s Move! She’d motivated a generation of kids to be healthier and more active. We could do the same on the emotional-wellness front with an initiative to teach kids how to express themselves and develop the coping skills to deal with difficult feelings. Melania was still on board with the goal.

I woke up in New York that Sunday and checked my phone. Melania had texted that she’d called Reince again about my badge and contract. No answer.

We got on the phone. She said, “I want to tell Reince to take care of you too.”

“I’m sure they realize that they shouldn’t have given out so much budgetary money to the West Wing,” I said.

“And you should be reimbursed for your expenses from the RNC.”

“Thank you… we will figure it out,” I said.

I wanted to be reimbursed, don’t get me wrong. I would have loved to draw a salary, too! But if I’d kept the six-figure salary offered to me as chief advisor, I’d have had little or no support staff. Dividing it up solved a problem for me, and for Melania. So essentially, I was paying to serve my country—physically, mentally, and financially. I was being depleted on all fronts.

We didn’t have a press person yet, our only open slot. Tim spent most of his afternoons in the West Wing and always came back with the same request: “Will you consider meeting with Stephanie Grisham?” She was the West Wing deputy communications director.

Nope!

I suspected it wouldn’t be long before Ivanka and Jared tried to install their handpicked stooge in the East Wing. All of a sudden she was cc’ed on emails from Hope Hicks to Lindsay. Grisham was being presented as a fait accompli.

A Fish Tale

On Monday, January 30, Ian Drew, entertainment director of Us Weekly, contacted Hope Hicks to do an accuracy check with someone in the White House for his next story about the First Couple, in particular their leading separate lives in different cities. (The piece was never published.)

News flash: that wasn’t going to change any time soon!

“Us Weekly [which would soon be bought by Trump BFF David Pecker] has been doing several positive cover stories on the First Family so would like to continue working with you moving forward,” Drew wrote to Hicks, as if that would sway her one way or the other.

Hicks and Grisham forwarded the most time-sensitive and highly damaging story line queries to Lindsay, who forwarded them to me. Why not cc me on the queries and save everyone a step? Why exclude the First Lady’s top advisor from potentially damaging information? Didn’t they realize they were just hurting Melania? Then again, it seemed like the West Wing’s calling the shots for the East Wing was the whole point. They wanted to contain her, and I was in the way.

Ian’s email included a list of statements about the Trumps’ sleeping arrangements and other bits of gossip. For example, “Donald doted on Melania all Inauguration weekend until she returned to NYC on January 22,” and “[Melania] enjoys time to herself when she can get it.” The nuggets had been divulged by a close “source,” per the reporter. This statement made me bark: “[Melania] is leaving a lot of the traditional First Lady duties to Ivanka and Jared so she can focus on being a mom. She feels her role is to be a mom first and also support Donald so he can do his job.” Ian asked that we merely confirm or deny the statements. If we didn’t reply, he’d consider it tacit confirmation. The magazine needed our response by the end of the day.

I could only guess the identity of Ian’s source.

Ivanka had garnered a reputation as being one of the biggest leakers of stories that made Jared and her look good—and, perhaps equally important, made everyone else look bad.

My response to the fake news about Melania gleefully handing over her role to Ivanka: “A source close to the First Lady said, ‘Mrs. Trump is actively building her team with her Senior Advisor, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, including hiring a Chief of Staff and a Social Secretary, among other key positions, to assist with the implementation of the First Lady’s key initiatives. While she is a mom first and her child is her number one priority, she is very much embracing the role and responsibilities of First Lady and will have a complete team to help her with her platform.’ ”

Ian asked one final question that seemed innocent enough: “[Did] Melania and Barron spend this past weekend with the President in DC?”

Short answer: nope.

Long answer: it’s quite a tale.

The reporter was on a fishing expedition, and the fish in question was a Pacific blue tang named Dory.

Someone had organized a movie night in the Family Theater in the White House Residence over the weekend. The film screened was Finding Dory, an animated feature starring Ellen DeGeneres about a young fish’s desperate journey to reunite with her long-lost parents in another country. The choice was particularly tone-deaf, because the president had just signed the travel ban, which effectively tore families from different countries apart.

Minutes after the Us Weekly email, I texted Melania that I was looking into the movie screening in the Residence. Melania told me that she’d asked Hope about it the night before and she’d told Melania, “I’m not sure, but I did warn the President it was a bad idea and wouldn’t be taken well.” Melania talked to Donald too, who said, “he didn’t have any idea what the movie was about.” So neither Donald nor Hope knew it was Ivanka who had requested the screening? That seemed odd.

I promised Melania, “This will never happen again.”

“Stephanie, you need to make sure that the press knows Barron and I were not there this weekend!”

A second later, she said, “Ask Angela whose idea was it.”

A second after that, she asked if I knew a great personal assistant. “Maybe someone from Vogue.”

What? The sudden change in direction gave me whiplash. Were we in crisis about the Finding Dory fiasco, or were we finding her an assistant, as if anyone in the fashion and magazine world would want to work for her (besides me)?

Before I could even start to reply, she said, “Now they think I was involved.” She attached a link to a breaking news story from Express, a British tabloid, titled “Donald Trump ‘watches FINDING DORY with family’ as protesters gather outside White House.”

Aha! Now we knew for sure who had organized the screening and leaked it to the press. Ivanka’s fingerprints were all over it. She knew the story was about to get out because of press queries to Hicks. Instead of reporters writing that it’d been Ivanka or Donald’s idea, she jumped ahead with “the family” to dilute the blame and rope in Melania. Whenever she needed to deflect the harsh media eye away from herself, she would use the phrase “the family” to cover her ass. It wasn’t Ivanka and Jared who had set up that offensive screening. It was “the family.”

Melania’s next tirade of texts asked who approved Ivanka Trump—a White House staffer—to use the screening room, which was part of the Residence, a.k.a. Melania’s domain? All things pertaining to the Executive Residence had to be approved and hosted by the president or First Lady.

It didn’t matter if Princess was the First Daughter. She wasn’t allowed to invade the Executive Residence whenever she liked. But she knew as long as a Principal (Donald or Melania) was present at the event, she was allowed to host one. Donald stopped by.

That afternoon, DeGeneres talked about the White House screening on her TV show Ellen. “A lot of protests going on at the airports all over the country because of the president’s travel ban… I don’t get political, but I will say I am against one of those two things. Like I said I don’t get political, so I’m not going to talk about the travel ban. I’m just going to talk about the very nonpolitical, family-friendly, People’s Choice Award–winning Finding Dory. Now, of course, Finding Dory is about a fish named Dory. And Dory lives in Australia. And these are her parents and they live in America. And I don’t know what religion they are, but her dad sounds a little Jewish. Doesn’t matter. Dory arrives in America with her friends Marlin and Nemo, and she ends up at the Marine Life Institute behind a large wall, and they all have to get over the wall. And, you won’t believe it, but that wall has almost no effect in keeping them out,” she said. “Even though Dory gets into America, she gets separated from her family. But the other animals help Dory. Animals that don’t even need her, animals that don’t even have anything in common with her. They help her even though they’re a completely different color. Because that’s what you do when you see someone in need. You help them.”

Because of “the family” headlines, Melania would be included in the (righteous) ridicule about the screening, despite her having nothing to do with it.

That tore it. Melania decided to draw a line in the sand. No one would be allowed to enter the Residence, her home (eventually), without prior approval of the First Lady, including Ivanka and Jared. “This is my home,” she said to me. “Do they come walking into my apartment in New York whenever they want?” No!

In White House politics, you take your small victories when and where you can.

All this had happened during the first week in the White House. I could only imagine what the next four years would bring.