Melania Trump: interested, manipulative and not as submissive as was believed
A book jettisoned the theory that President Donald Trump's wife is a victim trapped in a marriage from which she wants to break free. On the contrary, she is very much like her and has a lot of influence in the White House.
In January 2017, when Donald Trump was inaugurated in the Presidency, the entertainment magazines said that his marriage to Melania was going through a difficult time. They had reason to think so: during the campaign several women had denounced him for harassment and a video had been leaked in which he said “when you are a star, they let you do anything to them. Like grabbing them by the cunt ... ".
The new president, moreover, had moved almost immediately to the White House, while he had preferred to stay in his New York apartment with his son Barron. And as if that were not enough, at the inauguration ceremony he was so uncomfortable that millions of users viralized the phrase #FreeMelania (Free Melania) on social networks.
At that time many saw her as a victim: a woman married to a misogynist and uncomfortable in her role as first lady. The reality, however, was very different. The decision to stay in New York and her public rudeness were part of a well-thought-out strategy to pressure Trump into signing a new nuptial agreement.
Rather than portraying her as a submissive woman trapped in her marriage, the book describes her as manipulative, caring, and persevering.
She believed that with the presidency the conditions of her marriage changed, and she was willing to do anything, including taking advantage of the womanizing accusations against her husband so that he would agree to modify some of their previous dealings. Her plan worked: Trump agreed, and a few days later she arrived with her son at the White House and smiled again in the photos.
When Trump took office, Melania stayed in New York and was aloof with him in public. She did it to pressure the signing of a new nuptial agreement in which her youngest son Barron came out quite favored.
That story is part of The Art of Her Deal, a new unauthorized biography of Melania Trump written by journalist Mary Jordan of The Washington Post, which contradicts what has been said so far about the first lady. Rather than portraying her as a submissive woman trapped in her marriage, he describes her as manipulative, caring, and persevering.
She also says that she has more power than she appears in the White House and that, contrary to what many people think, she frequently supports her husband. “It is much more like her than it seems. They are both avid creators of their own story, ”says Jordan.
Indeed, Trump has managed to create a myth (not so real) of a freehand man around his fortune, and Melania has done the same. She was born in communist Yugoslavia, in now independent Slovenia, to a middle-class family, and over the years she managed to get high after promoting herself as a supermodel with an architecture course in Italy and five languages.
But none of the three is true: when Trump met her in the mid-1990s, she was an average model with a fairly regular career; she had dropped out of her architecture studies in the middle, and was only fluent in English and Slovenian. Her lies, however, paid off, and with Trump she made a winning match.
"She wanted written proof that, when it came to financial opportunities and inheritance, Barron would be treated as an equal to the three oldest children," the book says.
According to the book, Melania was the one who convinced him to run for president. "She said, 'You know, stop talking about running and do it ... If you compete, you're going to win,'" Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser, told the author. Since then he has become his right hand man. So much so that the president calls her every time she finishes a speech to ask her how she saw it and usually asks her about the most important decisions.
He would even have chosen Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate after asking her. "Melania told him that Pence would settle for being number two, unlike the other candidates," says the journalist.
The book also talks about her rivalry with her stepdaughter Ivanka, with whom she has a cordial but hypocritical relationship, one of competition for power. Ivanka secretly calls her "portrait" because of her tendency to remain silent; and she calls him "the princess," because of the way she behaves in her father's affairs.
The book confirms his rivalry with Ivanka, to whom he sarcastically calls "the princess." Melania, in fact, would have used the famous 'I don't really care' jacket to send her a message.
In fact, her interest in modifying the prenuptial agreement at the time of the presidential inauguration was born from the idea of protecting the financial future of her son Barron if Ivanka took the reins of the Trump organization. "She wanted written proof that, when it came to financial opportunities and inheritance, Barron would be treated as an equal to the three oldest children," the book says.
Ivanka, however, wasted no time. As Melania pushed from her New York apartment, she had already settled into the White House and became an essential component of her dad's presidency. So much so that when Melania arrived in Washington and realized that she was walking through the private areas of the White House like Pedro around his house, she demanded that her husband put limits on her. Not content with that, she scrapped an idea she had proposed to change the name of the Office of the First Lady to the Office of the First Family.
During the presidency, in addition, she has sent her several indirect messages. The most famous in 2018, when he wore a controversial jacket that had the inscription "I really don't care, do you?" while visiting shelters with immigrant children. In this way he criticized her for her tendency to monopolize all charity events.
Her mother worked in a children's clothing factory and her father was a mechanic and driver when they lived in Slovenia, then part of communist Yugoslavia.
Likewise, the biography confirms that Melania and the president live in separate floors, and that they even sleep in different beds on trips. Although she does not attribute this behavior to fights, but to their personalities: independent, autonomous and lovers of their freedom. It exposes that there can be love, although the people around them speak of a relationship with ups and downs. Your marriage, if anything, seems to prioritize loyalty and confidentiality above anything else.
Melania, likewise, is happier than she appears in the White House. So much so that, according to Jordan, she is willing to take to the streets to campaign for her husband in the November elections. Apparently she wants to exercise power in the shadows for another four years.
