‘Who gives a f**k about Christmas stuff?’ Trump haters paint First Lady as Grinch who loathes kids after CNN leaks #MelaniaTapes

Critics of President Donald Trump piled on the first lady after a former aide leaked a tape of Melania venting frustration about media hostility and her duties as first lady, including decorating the White House for Christmas.

Taped secretly in July 2018 by a former aide and close confidant, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the recordings also show the first lady was increasingly irritated with hostile media coverage of her husband’s presidency, namely his border policies – which, among other things, separated migrant children from their parents when they entered the country illegally.

“I’m working like – my ass off – on Christmas stuff, you know? Who gives a f**k about Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?” Melania says to Wolkoff, who agrees she had “no choice.”

“Then I do it,” the first lady continues. “And I say that I’m working on Christmas planning.... And they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that were separated?’ Give me a f**king break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that?”

Melania added that, at the time, she had been “trying to get the kid reunited with the Mom” – presumably referring to a migrant child detained with their parents at the border – but said “I didn’t have a chance. Needs to go through the process and through the law.”

They would not do the story [about reuniting the migrant child] because they – they are against us because they’re liberal media. Yeah, if I go to Fox, they will do the story. I don’t want to go to Fox!

The leaked recordings – first aired on CNN on Thursday night during an interview with Wolkoff, who is currently promoting a new book about her time working under the first lady and their falling out – quickly sent ‘Christmas’ and ‘#MelaniaTapes’ trending on Twitter. Opponents of the Trump administration immediately pounced on the audio, accusing Melania of waging a “War on Christmas,” repurposing a phrase popularized in conservative media.

Others argued that the first lady’s comments about migrant children were a show of callousness, though that line of attack provoked some pushback, with some responding that she merely observed that former President Barack Obama faced little criticism for his own deportation-heavy immigration policies, which also separated families and put “kids in cages.”

“I dislike her, but she’s kind of right in saying no one cared when Obama did it. And Obama actually had the power to stop it, she doesn’t,” one netizen said.

Many came to Melania’s defense, however, as one self-avowed detractor suggested the recordings show her “being real,” while another commenter deemed the story a “nothingburger” that merely depicts the first lady letting off steam to a friend in private.

As she tours her book around corporate media outlets eager to score an ‘October Surprise’ on the Trump administration ahead of the 2020 election, Wolkoff is also aiding a federal probe into Trump’s inauguration ceremony, which she helped to organize. She claims to have worked with prosecutors who allege Trump committed financial crimes in relation to the event, which his inaugural committee has repeatedly denied.

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