WASHINGTON: First Lady Melania Trump’s office is fed up with speculation about marital strife in the White House while US Ambassador Nikki Haley has slammed rumors that she was having an affair with President Donald Trump as “highly offensive” and “disgusting.”
Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, took to Twitter Friday to blast “flat-out false reporting” about the first lady that has emerged in recent days.
“BREAKING,” she wrote. “The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs. Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into ‘main stream media’ reporting.”
Grisham added that Mrs. Trump is focused on her family and role as first lady, “not the unrealistic scenarios being peddled daily by the fake news.”
The tabloid Daily Mail reported Friday that Mrs. Trump has spent a number of nights at a D.C. hotel in the wake of reports of allegations by adult film star Stormy Daniels that she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, shortly after he married Melania.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s personal lawyer brokered a $130,000 payment to Daniels in October 2016 to prohibit her from publicly discussing the alleged affair before the election. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has scheduled an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday.
Mrs. Trump had originally been scheduled to join her husband at an economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, this week. But her office said Tuesday, the day before Trump’s departure, that Mrs. Trump would not be going, citing unspecified scheduling and logistical issues.
‘Fire and Fury’
In an interview with Politico’s Women Rule podcast on Thursday, Haley shot down talk of being romantically involved with the US president.
“It is absolutely not true,” Haley said. “It is highly offensive, and it’s disgusting.”
Author Michael Wolff of the best-seller “Fire and Fury” suggested in an interview that Trump was having an affair and that the liaison was with someone detailed in his book.
Wolff wrote in his book that Haley, the most high-profile woman in Trump’s administration, was positioning herself as the president’s heir apparent.
Haley hit back at Wolff’s assertion in his book that she was spending a lot of private time with Trump on his presidential plane and in the Oval Office.
“I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there,” Haley said.
“He says that I’ve been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future. I’ve never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him.”
Haley attributed the rumors to sexism from a “small group of men” uneasy with strong-willed women.
“Most men respect women but there is a small group of men, that if you just do your job and you try and do it well and you are outspoken about it, they resent it. And they think the only option is to bring you down,” she said.
The former South Carolina governor who backed Trump rival Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination said she and Trump are in agreement on almost all policy issues.
“We get along great, and I agree with almost everything that he has done,” she said.
First lady’s rep blasts ‘false’ reports about Melania Trump
First lady’s rep blasts ‘false’ reports about Melania Trump
