Former first lady Melania Trump has addressed her now-infamous “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket yet again in her forthcoming memoir — claiming her press secretary wouldn’t let her speak “the truth” about its cryptic meaning at the time.
The wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump insisted she donned the controversial Zara jacket to tour a migrant detention center at the US-Mexico border in 2018 in a bid to send a “discreet yet impactful” message to the media who had recently been critical of her, The Guardian reported Thursday, citing an expert of the book.
The move, though, quickly sparked widespread controversy and backlash as many questioned her motives behind the brazen message.
Describing the moment she boarded the plane at the end of the tour, Melania wrote that the inbox of her then-press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, was immediately “flooded with urgent emails from top-tier media outlets regarding the jacket.”
“It’s a message for the media,’ I said, ‘to let them know I was unconcerned with their opinions of me’ [but] she told me I couldn’t say that. ‘Why not? It is the truth,” the 54-year-old recalled of the exchange with Grisham.
“I disagreed with her insistence that I couldn’t say that,” Melania alleged, according to the outlet. “Ignoring my comments, she told a CNN reporter she was friendly with that it was simply a jacket, a fashion choice with no underlying message.”
In her memoir, Melania went on to blame the subsequent frenzy over the $39 jacket for overshadowing the “importance of the children, the border, and the policy change” and was “just another example of the media’s irresponsible behavior.”
Meanwhile, Grisham addressed the jacket saga in her own 2021 memoir, writing that she and the first lady had been told off by Trump when they returned to the White House.
Contradicting Melania’s claim she came up with the idea to wear the jacket to protest the media, Grisham wrote that Trump was behind it and shouted: “You just tell them you were talking to the f–king press.”
Grisham, on her part, abruptly resigned as Melania’s chief of staff in 2021 and has become an outspoken critic of the Trump family.
The former first lady has already addressed the jacket saga in the past, telling ABC News shortly after she wore it that she had been protesting the “left-wing media” over recent criticism of her.
