Furious that Donald Trump’s Minneapolis fiasco was upstaging her film, Melania Trump forced her husband to overhaul his deportation campaign, author Michael Wolff claims.
“This was supposed to be the Melania week,” Wolff told his co-host Joanna Coles on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
But on Saturday, as the 55-year-old first lady prepared to host a screening of her documentary, Melania, federal immigration agents killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
According to Wolff, a “truly p—ed-off” Melania bristled as outrage over Trump’s deportation operation swallowed the spotlight meant for her $75 million film ahead of its premiere at the Kennedy Center on Thursday.
That ultimately pushed Trump, 79, to shove several of his own aides and Cabinet members who led the Minnesota crackdown to the sidelines, Wolff said.
“You cannot alienate the first lady to the extent that she makes it an issue with the president,” he told Coles. “Almost everyone within the White House acknowledges that this is a tripwire.”
Wolff, who wrote his 2018 bestseller Fire and Fury based on his behind-the-scenes observations in the White House, remarked that Trump is “not moved by normal political considerations, but he is moved by a p—ed-off wife.”
“What he does not want is a p—ed-off and uncontrolled Melania,” he said.
By the time the president showed up to Melania’s tacky, billionaire-studded watch party, he had begun to “wobble” on his deportation operation.
“The shooting of Alex Pretti is Saturday morning. Saturday evening is the screening of Melania, the movie. So during this period, the president, Donald Trump, begins to shift in his view of this,” Wolff said.
On Monday, Trump ousted Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino from Minneapolis and moved Border Czar Tom Homan, a foe of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in his place.
Noem, who falsely branded Pretti a “domestic terrorist,” is reportedly on thin ice and met with the president for two hours on Monday evening. Meanwhile, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who was condemned for calling Pretti an “assassin,” was iced out of the meeting.
Wolff noted that Melania, who was born in Slovenia, previously intervened on an immigration issue during Trump’s first term, when his administration’s zero-tolerance policy led to family separations at the southern border.
“Melania, the nation’s most famous immigrant, stepped in and said this was untenable,” Wolff said. “She expressed herself, and she doesn’t usually express herself. And remember, we’re talking about the nature, the complicated balance of this marriage.”
Trump ended up abandoning the policy in 2018, after more than 5,000 children were split from their families.
Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Wolff is currently suing Melania under special New York state laws to protect reporters and free speech after she threatened to sue him for $1 billion.
Despite the first lady’s best efforts to promote Melania, the documentary is failing to fill theater seats across the nation.
The film, which follows the first lady during the 20 days leading up to the president’s second inauguration last year, opens Friday in an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 theaters nationwide.
But social media users have mocked the apparent lack of interest in Melania by posting screenshots of cinema showtimes with scores of unsold seats. The Daily Beast also found multiple examples of Melania screenings in New York and Los Angeles theaters with either sparsely sold or entirely unsold tickets.
The National Research Group estimates that Melania, for which Jeff Bezos’ Amazon MGM Studios shelled out $75 million, will pull in just $5 million during its opening weekend.
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung provided the Daily Beast with a recycled statement: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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