One Of Melania's Boldest Fashion Statements Was A Supposed Dig At Ivanka Trump

Years after former first lady Melania Trump offered her story behind her controversial "I Really Don't Care" jacket, a new explanation has emerged. Trump wore the jacket to the United States-Mexico border in 2018, and many critics viewed it as disrespectful to the border crisis where immigrant children were being forcibly removed from their parents. However, according to a book by White House correspondent Katie Rogers, the green army jacket with the blasé quote printed on the back wasn't a comment about migrant children or the left-wing media at all. It was a message from stepmother to stepdaughter.

Rogers' book "American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden" claims that the divisive jacket was a byproduct of a slow-simmering feud between Melania Trump and Donald Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump. Rogers writes that former Trump administration officials confirmed the jacket was targeted at Ivanka, as "the pair were locked in a quiet competition for press coverage" (via New York Post).

If the reasoning behind Melania's controversial jacket is true, that would make this incident even more of a public dig than Melania's supposed "Operation Block Ivanka" mission, in which the former first lady and her advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff made seating arrangements for Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration that would block Ivanka's face from view of the cameras.

Author and reporter Katie Rogers is certainly not the first person to discuss Melania Trump's rocky relationship with Ivanka Trump. Melania's former advisor, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, made similar claims in her book, "Melania & Me," writing that the former first lady regularly called her stepdaughter a "princess" and a "snake." Wolkoff compared the relationship between Melania and Ivanka to the Cold War, painting a picture of a largely unhappy dynamic between two of the most central women in Donald Trump's life.

Roger's book states that Melania was displeased with the idea of working with — and competing for media attention against — her husband's eldest daughter. Unnamed sources told Rogers that the first lady was preoccupied with the public's perception of her, particularly in comparison to Ivanka, and frequently searched the internet to see what people were saying about the Trumps. Apparently, that preoccupation led to the decision for Melania, typically clad in designer wear, to don a $39 Zara jacket during her trip to the United States-Mexico border.

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham might've known about the first lady's true intentions all along. "To be honest, I don't know what she was thinking," Grisham wrote of the jacket in her memoir "I'll Take Your Questions Now" (via New York Magazine). "Maybe she was sending a message to someone else by wearing that jacket, but I was never sure."

Former first lady Melania Trump wore the controversial jacket while getting on and off her plane during a 2018 visit to an immigration detention facility in McAllen, Texas. A media frenzy ensued after reports of migrant children being separated from their parents were released, and many believed Trump's quippy jacket was a flagrant disrespect to the severity of the United States-Mexico border crisis. The administration's seemingly ever-evolving explanation for why Trump chose to wear the jacket on that day, in particular, only added to the controversy.

At first, a spokesperson for the first lady told the press that there was no secret agenda behind Melania's choice of clothing. But her husband, then-President Donald Trump, would directly refute this claim of neutrality in a tweet mere hours later, writing: 'I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?' written on the back of Melania's jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!"

Melania later gave ABC News the same explanation, claiming it was a defensive move against the hypercritical and ill-focused media. However, the idea that the jacket was meant for Ivanka places the former first lady in a much more offensive position. Credit where credit's due for Melania, though — addressing beef with a relative via one's clothing might not be the most productive method of communication, but it's certainly unique.