A reclusive Melania Trump was seen so infrequently in the West Wing that staffers started referring to first daughter Ivanka Trump as the president’s “real wife” and closest aide Hope Hicks as his “real daughter,” according to an explosive new book.
In a column Thursday for The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Wolff, author of the scathing expose “Fire and Fury,” repeats the unflattering nicknames.
“With his daughter and son-in-law sidelined by their legal problems, Hope Hicks, Trump’s 29-year-old personal aide and confidant, became, practically speaking, his most powerful White House advisor,” Wolff wrote.
“With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the ‘real wife’ and Hicks as the ‘real daughter.’”
Hicks, he wrote, had the challenging job of tending “to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him. It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season.”
Instead, the interview went to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, an unabashed Trump supporter.