First Lady Melania Trump was secretly recorded in the summer of 2018 expressing her frustration at being criticized for her husband's policy of separating families who illegally crossed the southern border while at the same time needing to perform traditional first lady duties, such as preparing for Christmas.
"They say I'm complicit. I'm the same like him, I support him. I don't say enough I don't do enough where I am," she said in a tape secretly recorded by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and senior adviser to the first lady who wrote a book about their relationship, "Melania and Me."
The tapes were played exclusively on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Thursday night and were recorded by Wolkoff after she left the White House.
"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?"
She continued, "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 get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn't have a chance -- needs to go through the process and through the law."
The policy Melania Trump was referring to was different from that of her husband, President Donald Trump. Under former President Barack Obama, children were separated from parents only when authorities had concerns for their well-being or could not confirm that the adult was in fact their legal guardian, but not as a blanket policy as was done under Trump -- until a judge forced the administration to stop.
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