First Lady Melania Trump exchanged a frosty greeting with Ivanka Trump on the stage of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, hours after details of their fraught relationship were released in an excerpt of an upcoming book.
After Ivanka shared an introductory remarks for her father’s acceptance speech she shared a brief glance with Melania walking across the stage.
Melania was captured on video giving the First Daughter a smile and a nod before bulging her eyes and making a cold, sour expression.
Earlier on Thursday an excerpt of an upcoming book penned by Melania’s former best friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was released, revealing that the First Lady plotted ‘Operation Block Ivanka’ to prevent Ivanka from appearing in Trump’s inauguration photos.
Social media users were quick to pick up on the tension and posted close-up videos of Melania’s reaction.
‘Melania Trump gives Ivanka Trump that look that “I like you only because I have to,”‘ one Twitter user noted.
‘Call it a hunch, but I don’t think Melania likes Ivanka very much. On that, we can agree,’ another Twitter user commented.
‘Did Melania just roll her eyes at Ivanka,’ another Twitter user asked.
In ‘Operation Block Ivanka’ Melania approved seating arrangements for the inauguration platform that would keep Ivanka out of the camera shot when her father was sworn in as president.
Wolkoff, who oversaw big events like the Met Gala, helped organize events around Trump’s inauguration.
Together they worked out where the cameras would be set on inauguration day and how the chairs for family members should be positioned to get the images they wanted.
In the end Ivanka was placed behind Melania, in some images lost from view.
‘We were all exhausted and stressed out. Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty. Melania was in on this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka shouldn’t have made herself the center of attention in her father’s inauguration,’ Wolkoff wrote.
She notes their operation was a result of the first daughter trying to control the schedule for inauguration day and make sure her family – husband Jared Kushner and their three children – had prominent positions on the big day.
‘It was Donald’s inauguration, not Ivanka’s. But no one was brave enough to tell her that. Melania was not thrilled about Ivanka’s steering the schedule and would not allow it. Neither was she happy to hear that Ivanka insisted on walking in the Pennsylvania Avenue parade with her children,’ she noted.
