Ivanka Trump Fought With Melania, Wanted To Be First Lady In 'Ceremonial Ways': Report

Ivanka Trump, daughter of former President Donald Trump, often fought with her father's wife Melania for influence in the White House, according to a New York Times journalist.

Speaking with MSNBC, Michael Schmidt, who wrote the book "Donald Trump v. The United States," said ex-White House chief of staff John Kelly was forced to be the one to deal with the conflicts between the Trumps.

"John Kelly is probably as serious a national security figure as you can find, a four-star Marine general. He comes into the White House, he thinks that he needs to put in structure and better staffing for Trump and all of a sudden, he's confronting far more frivolous issues like fights between the first lady and Ivanka Trump, and Ivanka Trump trying to maneuver, what Kelly was told, to become the first lady in this ceremonial ways," Schmidt said.

Schmidt is not the first person to report about conflict brewing between Ivanka and Melania. In the 2020 book "Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady," author and Melania's former confidant, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, said the ex-first lady took steps to block Ivanka from appearing in photos of Donald swearing in as the president at the inauguration.

On the other hand, Wolkoff claimed Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, who worked as White House staffers at the time, were also always looking for opportunities to undermine Melania and get an office space in the East Wing.

"Ivanka was relentless and was determined to be the First Daughter Lady and to usurp office space out from under Melania; she wanted to be the only visible female Trump on the premises," Wolkoff wrote in the book.

Another instance of the conflict between the Trumps allegedly involved former deputy campaign chief Rick Gates who took the blame for Melania's speech, which plagiarized a speech by Michelle Obama. In her book, Wolkoff suggested that Ivanka could have been behind Melania's "major faux pas/sabotage," adding that Trump's daughter may have "controlled Rick."

Wolkoff, an events planner in New York, went to work for Melania as special unpaid government staff. She also assisted in planning Trump's inauguration and was later found to have personally received $1.62 million from the money raised to pay for the event. An event planning firm she started was also found to have been paid nearly $26 million for the inauguration, per The New York Times.