Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Melania Trump is expecting to be pilloried in Vanity Fair, even though her friends either refused to talk to reporter Evgenia Peretz or said only good things about the first lady.

Melania declined to be interviewed for the piece, but a White House insider said it was clear from the questions Peretz asked others and the fact-checking being done that the story will be “mean-spirited.”

Peretz is said to have talked to two mothers with kids at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory, where Barron, 11, goes to school, and where, Vanity Fair reported in November, “some parents are freaking out.”

“[The other moms] have all been running as far away from Peretz as possible,” a source said. But a magazine insider said the polite and professional Peretz was introduced to a third mother.

Vanity Fair declined to comment.

One Melania associate who was interviewed on the record is Paolo Zampolli, whose modeling agency represented Melania when she first came to New York. It was Zampolli who introduced Donald Trump to the Slovenian stunner.

Zampolli, who recorded the interview to guarantee that he would be quoted accurately, spoke glowingly about his “friends.” But he isn’t expecting the story to be flattering.

“How can you expect a nice story from Vanity Fair?” he wondered