Melania Trump, wife of Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump speaks during the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Monday, July 18, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It’s only October 1st but the surprises have already started hitting – and Thursday night’s installment was a doozy! It started when First Lady Melania Trump’s friend of more than a decade, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was employed as one of Melania’s advisors in the White House and whose event planning firm headed up the Trump Inauguration, appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. Wolkoff appeared on the program to discuss the contents of secret recordings of multiple telephone calls she had with Melania in 2018, and which CNN aired.

The contents of the recordings are contained in a book Wolkoff just released, “Melania and Me,” detailing their long friendship in New York City, Melania’s transition to the White House, and Wolkoff’s feeling that she was the fall girl when an investigation was launched into what happened to the insane amounts of money the inaugural committee took in. (The Hill reports that Wolkoff personally pocketed $500,000 for her event planning services.)

The calls center around Melania’s frustration with the mainstream media and her belief that the media wasn’t willing to print stories about positive things she was doing regarding children held in detention centers at the US/Mexico Border, instead continually seeking ways to paint her as “complicit” with her husband’s policies

Here's all of the Melania Trump audio played on @andersoncooper tonight. The audio was taped by her former friend and advisor @SWWCreative.

In the tapes, Mrs. Trump talks about:

– Family separations
– Christmas
– "Liberal media"
– The "I really don't care" jacket pic.twitter.com/N2Y8QtqD8n

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 2, 2020

In June 2018 Melania visited a shelter where immigrant children were being detained. In a partial clip of that call, she said:

All these kids that I met, they’re in the shelters because they were brought through coyotes. The people were trafficking. And that’s why they put them in jail, and the kids they go in shelters. And the way they take care of them, the kids, they say, ‘Wow I will have my own bed? I will sleep on the bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?’ It’s so sad to hear it. But they didn’t have that in their own countries, they sleep on the floor. They are taken care of nicely there. But you know, yeah, they are not with parents, it’s sad. But when they come here alone or with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something.”
“A lot of like moms and kids they are teached how to do it. They go over and they say like, ‘Oh, we will be killed by a gang member, we will be, you know, it’s so dangerous. So they are allowed to stay here. Some of them are using those lines. They’re not professional, but they are teached by other people what to say to come over and to you know let them go to stay here. Because they could easily stay in Mexico but they don’t want to stay in Mexico because Mexico doesn’t take care of them the same as America does.”

During a July 2018 call Melania was still frustrated with the criticism, venting to her “friend”:

“They say I’m complacent. I’m the same like him, I support him. I don’t say enough I don’t do enough where I am. I’m working … my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?

Wolcott replied:

“Yeah, but – 100 percent. You have no choice.”

Of course, every liberal Democrat on Twitter and a few of the lovely, unbiased members of the White House Press Corps tweeted it as if Melania said she doesn’t “give a f**k about Christmas. Give me a break.

Melania then called out the mainstream media’s amnesia/ignorance about Obama’s terrible record on border control.

“OK, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f****** break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I can not go – I was trying to get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn’t have a chance. It needs to go through the process and through the law.”

Wolcott replied, apparently giving her some professional/messaging advice:”

But, here’s my thing…your messaging, you were so loved. You were.

Melania said:

They will not do the story. We put it out. They would not do the story. You would not believe it. They would not do the story because they are not – they would not do the story because they’re against us. They’re the liberal media. Yeah, if I go to Fox they’ll do the story. I don’t want to go to Fox.

Melania also addressed the “I Really Don’t Care. Do U” jacket controversy saying she bought it to “drive the liberals crazy…They deserve it.”

The First Lady’s spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, issued a statement to CNN:

“Secretly taping the First Lady and willfully breaking an NDA to publish a salacious book is a clear attempt at relevance. The timing of this continues to be suspect – as does this never-ending exercise in self-pity and narcissism.”

Right after Wolcott’s appearance on Anderson Cooper 360, President Trump appeared on Hannity and confirmed rumors that a high-level aide, Hope Hicks, had tested positive for coronavirus and that he and Melania had taken a test and were awaiting results. A couple of hours later, Trump tweeted that he and Melania tested positive for the virus.

Judging by the events of October 1, we’re in for quite a month.