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\\u201cI begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing,\\u201d says Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, author of Melania and Me.  

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff considered Melania Trump a friend\\u2014more than a friend, really. Wolkoff even followed Melania to Washington, helping produce the 2017 inauguration and advise the incoming First Lady. But when the stories started coming out about the insane overspending during the Inauguration, Wolkoff says Melania threw her to the wolves\\u2014allowing Wolkoff to take the blame in the press and kicking her out of the White House.

\\u201cI begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing. So the betrayal, the pain of that was like\\u2014I gave up my whole life for this woman. No one else would help Melania. I mean, she was alone,\\u201d Wolkoff tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. \\u201cI should\'ve known better. She is just like her husband.\\u201d

So Wolkoff began taping her calls with Melania\\u2014calls which formed some of the bedrock for her book, Melania and Me. Improbably, Wolkoff and the First Lady kept talking, even after Wolkoff was cast out. 

When Melania wore that instantly-infamous \\u201cI Don\\u2019t Care\\u201d jacket on a trip to a center for migrant kids, Wolkoff called. 

Their mutual friend, the fashion designer Herve Pierre, was being attacked online for the fiasco because he had made dresses for Melania in the past. But this jacket was a $39 item from Zara. Wolkoff asked the First Lady: Would she clear things up? Say something in public?

Melania admits that Pierre \\u201chad nothing to do with that jacket.\\u201d But she declines to make any kind of statement on his behalf. Instead, Melania laughs, \\u201cI\'m driving liberals crazy, that\'s for sure. And you know\\u2026 they deserve it.\\u201d

Wolkoff was horrified. \\u201cWhen I sent [Pierre] the photograph [of the jacket], he immediately wrote me back saying, \\u2018Is this Photoshop? \\u2018And I wanted so desperately to say yes,\\u201d Wolkoff tells Jong-Fast. \\u201cHe was devastated.\\u201d 

\\u201cThere\'s so much callousness,\\u201d Wolkoff continues. \\u201cEven in just trying to get [Pierre] paid for collaborating with her and making her first dress, it was like pulling teeth. There is no empathy or remorse for the fact that here\'s someone who was blamed because he\'s known as her \\u2018stylist.\\u2019\\u201d     

Moments like these\\u2014and the casual dismissal over the Inaugural\\u2014made Wolkoff feel better about recording conversations with a woman to whom she had once been so closely connected. 

\\u201cTaping a friend is, it\'s unacceptable. It really is. But Melania was no longer my friend when I pressed record. Because when I pressed record on the conversations I had with her, it was only after she, Donald, and the PIC [Presidential Inauguration Committee] [tried] to make me the scapegoat and to falsely accuse me for the overspending of $107 million of the inaugural funds,\\u201d she tells Jong-Fast. \\u201cFirst and foremost, I taped to protect myself because I needed to be protected once I knew I was going to be under investigation.\\u201d

Jong-Fast answers, \\u201cI don\'t think anyone ever regrets taping a Trump.\\u201d

This is part two of a two-part talk with Wolkoff. In part one, Wolkoff took us inside the war between Ivanka and Melania Trump.

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