It just so happens that the two friends are the first lady of the United States and the Vogue alum with event-producing bonafides who helped plan the presidential inauguration and joined the East Wing staff before their relationship came publicly unglued in the midst of questions over inaugural spending and security clearances in the White House. Ultimately, it’s an illuminating story of the dissolution of a female friendship, with drama both high and low, slights overt and subtle, and visceral pain. Wolkoff’s book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady, out September 1, is the height of this revelation, the ceiling of the floor. That simple fact is more revealing than any leaked anecdote in any of these stories. And an even wilder notion: they were right. For three different sets of reasons, Mary Trump, Cohen, and Wolkoff had the same knee-jerk response. The only reason these books exist is because the Trumps created a climate of backbiting and mistrust that subsumed everyone around them-a climate in which things like recording run-of-the-mill conversations to cover their hides or protect themselves from criminal investigations became the norm. It’s that some of the people closest to the Trumps have felt so jilted by them, so burned, so wrung out, that they’re willing to spill their guts about their own family or closest friends. What has struck me most about these books is not what salacious stories they have to share, though the stories are delicious and damning as advertised. Three variations on the form are hitting the market this summer: books from Mary Trump, the president’s niece Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer and now Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former close friend and adviser of first lady Melania Trump-three accounts from the most inside insiders of Trumpworld. I say this with both affection for and intimate knowledge of the genre because I myself contributed to it. The successful books of this genre have often followed a form: Reporters teasing the juiciest, scariest, most revealing accounts from people who know Trump or worked with him or served under him, the “adults in the room” who whispered anonymously about the horrible things they witnessed, but who did nothing about them beyond said whispering. And apart from the cottage industry of Trump–themed books-all the fire and fury that’s been fit to print, dominate cable-news coverage, and hover on bestsellers lists. The era of Donald Trump has been bad for everyone and everything, mostly, apart from the superrich and their tax bills, the real estate developers and their tax breaks, and the white supremacists, who seem to have been granted permission from the top to say the quiet part out loud.
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