Melania Trump is 'A Con Artist,' Former GOP Strategist Claims

First lady Melania Trump is "a con artist," a former GOP strategist and critic of President Donald Trump claimed.

Related: Donald Trump Says If Melania Had Face-Lift, He Would Have Let His Supporters Know

"Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone. She's a con artist also. All of them are. It goes with the last name," Steve Schmidt, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and ran Senator John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008, tweeted about Melania Trump.

Schmidt, who recently quit the Republican Party over the administration's policy of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border, was responding to Matthew Miller, an MSNBC justice and security analyst, who in his tweet, said, "This entire schtick is so tiresome," referring to remarks the first lady made during a speech at the Students Against Destructive Decisions annual conference in Virginia on Sunday night.

"Kindness, compassion, and positivity are very important traits in life," the first lady said. "It is far easier to say nothing than it is to speak words of kindness. It is easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand."

No doubt, Melania Trump is a more mysterious first lady than many of her predecessors.

She moved into the White House nearly five months after her husband took office, giving some people the impression that she was not eager to assume her role. The first lady, however, stepped up in the following months, visiting Hurricane Harvey victims without the president and taking the lead in decorating the White House for the holidays.

When reports made headlines in January that Donald Trump allegedly had had an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, Melania Trump canceled some of her public appearances with her husband and arrived at his State of the Union address on her own. While some of her actions have suggested the first lady is upset about the alleged affair, the first lady has remained silent on the matter.

More questions about Melania Trump circulated when she was suddenly hospitalized and underwent kidney surgery in mid-May, and disappeared from the public eye for 26 days. Speculations about her absence included that she had moved back to New York, or had had a face-lift, rumors her husband has denied.

Schmidt is not the first person to question Melania Trump's authenticity.

Vanity Fair reporter Emily Jane Fox, whose book Born Trump: Inside America's First Family, was released earlier this month, recently responded, "Yes, yes and yes," when asked on MSNBC whether the first lady and first daughter Ivanka Trumpwere "just the most stoic human beings, are they numb, are they dead inside, are they paid off."