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The First Lady referenced her former friend, who was also her senior advisor, as she criticised the media’s attention towards “idle gossip and palace intrigue”. In her controversial new book, Melania and Me, Ms Wolkoff makes a series of claims that portray Ms Trump in a bad light.

The former aide also unearthed secret recordings which appeared to show Ms Trump blasting Stormy Daniels, who was accused of having an affair with her husband, Donald Trump, calling her “the porn hooker”.

Ms Wolkoff played the incendiary tapes on Mea Culpa, a podcast presented by Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer.

In the recordings, the First Lady can be heard telling Ms Wolkoff that Ms Daniels secured a coveted photo shoot for Vogue by photographer Annie Leibovitz.

She said: “If you Google, go Google and read it Annie Leibovitz shot the porn hooker, as she will be in one of the issues, September or October.”

Ms Wolkoff asked: “What do you mean, she shot the ‘porn hooker’?”

Ms Trump replied: “Stormy.”

In response to Ms Wolkoff’s surprise, Ms Trump added: “Oh you didn’t read it. It was yesterday it came out. For Vogue. She will be in Vogue. Annie Leibowitz shot her.”

But now Ms Wolkoff is now being sued by the US Department of Justice on non-discloure agreement breach grounds.

Addressing the media’s coverage of her former friend’s claims, Ms Trump said: “The media has chosen to focus on stories of idle gossip and palace intrigue by editorialising real events and policies with their own bias and agendas.

The First Lady also said the media’s focus on the book had interfered in her work helping children.

She said: “For instance my initiative Be Best has one main goal, helping children, yet the media have chosen to take attention away from the children and focus only on the negative.

“But that will not stop me from doing what is right.”

Ms Trump had previously addressed the damage the book and subsequent media coverage caused to her Be Best campaign in a blog post shared on the White House website.

She wrote: “BE BEST has one simple purpose—to help children.

“It serves to provide the tools children need to prepare them for their futures.”

However, she argued that “more often than not, information that could be helpful to children is lost in the noise made by self-serving adults.”

The former model added: “I have most recently found this to be the case as major news outlets eagerly covered salacious claims made by a former contractor who advised my office.

“A person who said she ‘made me’ even though she hardly knew me, and someone who clung to me after my husband won the Presidency.

“This is a woman who secretly recorded our phone calls, releasing portions from me that were out of context, then wrote a book of idle gossip trying to distort my character.

“Her ‘memoir’ included blaming me for her ailing health from an accident she had long ago, and for bad news coverage that she brought upon herself and others.

“Never once looking within at her own dishonest behaviour and all in an attempt to be relevant.

“These kinds of people only care about their personal agenda—not about helping others.”

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