More details of Ivanka Trump and her stepmother Melania Trump‘s tense relationship is coming to light thanks to Mary Jordan’s new book, The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump. Released Tuesday, the book reveals the peculiar nickname Trump once had for the first lady.
According to the controversial new biography, which is based on more than 100 interviews, Trump used to call Melania “The Portrait” due to how little she spoke. Ivanka used the nickname when she was “younger,” according to the New York Time‘s review. In turn, Melania called her stepdaughter “The Princess,” likely a reference to Trump’s privileged and entitled lifestyle as the daughter of a billionaire.
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Jordan’s book details a strained relationship between the first lady and her stepdaughter, including a number of incidents that took place following the president’s 2016 win. As Melania remained in New York City with son Barron, her move to the White House reportedly delayed due to renegotiations of her prenuptial agreement with the president, Trump swept in and took her place. Appointed as an adviser in her father’s administration, with “staff positions and budgets that would have been available to support the first lady’s office” instead “diverted to support those in the West Wing, including Ivanka,” Trump made a number of requests. Among those requests was an attempt to have her father officially rename the “First Lady’s Office” the “First Family Office,” something that the first lady “did not allow.” After finally taking up residence in the White House, the first lady reportedly “put an end to the ‘revolving door’ by enforcing firm boundaries.”
The contents of the book, however, have been denied and criticized by those close to the first lady. In a statement to ABC News on Monday, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman and chief of staff, said this was “yet another book about Mrs. Trump with false information and sources.” She added that Jordan’s book “belongs in the fiction genre.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere also slammed the book, particularly the claims regarding the first lady and her stepdaughter’s relationship, stating that the claims contained in it “couldn’t be further from the truth and had the Washington Post or the publishers of this book fact-checked this with Ivanka’s office, they would know that,” PEOPLE reports. Deere added that “hit pieces like these only serve to conjure non-existent palace-intrigue stories unworthy of the paper they’re printed on.”
