First lady Melania Trump is the one force neither the president nor his staff can control in his administration, author Michael Wolff writes.
In a new column for his Substack, HOWL, Wolff wrote that White House staffers are terrified of Melania’s unpredictability, especially after her Jeffrey Epstein bombshell address, in which she denied having any sort of relationship with him.
“Everybody in the White House is afraid of Melania Trump and her power—that is, if she chooses to use it,” Wolff wrote.
“They largely think she won’t, or at least won’t use it so obviously enough to directly threaten the palace, but they can’t be sure. At the same time, they think that the relationship between the president and his wife is probably at its lowest point since the Stormy Daniels trial—and that was very low,” he elaborated.
Wolff alleges that “Trump and his wife barely speak,” and notes that “There is hardly even the pretense that she lives in the White House,” as it has been reported that Melania appears to live in New York rather than living full-time in Washington with her husband.
Wolff also claimed that within the White House “there is alarm about her next business moves”—more so than Trump’s children’s business deals.
“Of all the self-dealing among Trump family members, Melania’s moves—not just about money, but about calling attention to herself—are seen as most disturbing to the White House, and most in danger of putting her on a collision course with the president,” Wolff wrote.
“It’s okay to make money in the Trump White House and in the Trump family, not so okay to make yourself the main event,” he noted.
A 927-page financial disclosure report released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on June 30 found that despite the first lady’s documentary, Melania, bombing at the box office, the movie made big bucks for the Trumps.
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon MGM Studios paid $75 million for the film, which followed the first lady in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration, but the film grossed just $16.7 million worldwide.
However, the government ethics report found that the Trumps raked in $10.71 million in proceeds from the film license agreement. Melania also earned a reported $521,000 from her 2024 memoir of the same name.
When reached for comment, White House spokesman Davis Ingle offered a recycled statement, saying “Michael Wolff is a lying piece of s--t.”
Wolff also noted that because Melania’s moves appear to be unpredictable, “almost nobody near Trump—including Trump himself—knows Melania’s moves until she makes them.”
“Trump’s political vulnerabilities lie in plain sight—the grift, his violations of the law, the dubiousness of his associates, and the questions about his own physical and mental health,” Wolff wrote.
“But aides, lawyers, doctors, congressional leaders, and billionaires, all depending on his favor, have so far been willing to participate in one of history’s greatest stonewall efforts,” he concluded. “His wife, freer now and more distant than she ever has been from him in their marriage, is a wild card that he can’t seem to control or even game.”
