Donald Trump is preparing daughter Ivanka to become the next US President and Melania Trump is complicit, according to the author of a new book about the First Lady.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who used to be one of Melania's closest friends, released tell-all book Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with The First Lady earlier this month.
The Trump administration claims Winston Wolkoff made secret illegal recordings of conversations with Melania.
In an interview with Channel 9 Australia's 60 Minutes programme, Winston Wolkoff claimed Ivanka has "usurped" power from Melania.
"You have to understand who they [the Trumps] are to understand what they're trying to do - which is fleece the nation.
"The fact that he's [Donald] literally getting Ivanka ready to become a President and already putting that in people's minds is just insane.
"[Melania] has succumbed to her stepdaughter's ability to squash her as the First Lady to do anything effective to affect change.
"If Donald had to pick between, you know, branding Ivanka or branding Melania, well, he's already shown us who he's branded, right?"
But Winston Wolkoff said despite her husband apparently choosing his daughter over her, Melania is "complicit"
"She is not unhappy," she told 60 Minutes.
"The Trump family are masters of the dark.
"I think that whenever he [Donald] needs something to distract away from something else, Melania plays a role in that."
Winston Wolkoff said her and Melania's friendship came to an end after Donald's inauguration as US President which her event planning company was contracted to pull together.
The inauguration soon became the subject of a federal investigation over misused funds, and Winston Wolkoff felt she was being used as a scapegoat.
"[She] stabbed me in the back, and sliced me on the neck and threw me under the bus," Winston Wolkoff told Channel 9.
"They took my life from me in a matter of seconds - the life I built for myself and my children and my husband and my family was crushed by this machine of false narratives."