Melania Trump, the Mona Lisa of the White House
A new biography of the first lady of the United States offers more details about her mysterious personality and her relationship with the president
She is not very fond of social networks, but today everyone has a digital past, and there is an old tweet that has haunted the first lady of the United States until today, even more than her nude photos when she worked as a model. In the picture you see a white beluga. "What is she thinking about?", Wrote Melania Trump in 2012. Jokes aside about the animal's meditations, it's the same thing that the US continues to wonder about her today, "a first lady like no other" says Kate Bennett in a new biography, Free, Melania.
Her mood is as difficult to read as the Mona Lisa's smile. Do you hate your husband or is she your closest confidante? Does she feel like a prisoner in the White House or is she the one pulling the strings? A vase woman with no other attributes than her beauty or highly intelligent? As with the mysterious Da Vinci canvas, all kinds of theories circulate about the personality and life of this woman, as reserved as she is outgoing is her husband, whom she has been attached to for 20 years.
The book, which defines Melania as "conservative", forgets that she actively participated in the 'birther' movement against Obama
For Bennett she is above all someone fiercely independent who has always done things her way. In the Trump Tower and in the White House. It is one of her qualities that her husband, who rarely uses the word love to refer to her, appreciates the most. That and that makes him feel strong and successful, as he said when both got engaged, after five years of relationship in which he had been able to verify that, unlike other couples, the Slovenian model was not going to try to change him. "He is how he is," she often says. A prenuptial agreement, which Melania signed without question, was the precondition for "the wedding of the century," as Trump saw to it being known.
The journey to the mysteries of Melania Knauss (1970) begins in Slovenia, where its inhabitants offer some clues about their national character that help explain the usual glacial expression of their first lady. In the transalpine country, just smiling is not common. “We don't always like to pretend what it isn't,” explains a former high school classmate of Melania. If she rarely smiles it is because "I am not pretending", as she herself once told him. The first lady of the United States grew up in a modest apartment in the city of Sevnica, from where she left to study design and photography in the capital, Ljubljana. I had dreams. Within a year of enrolling at university to study architecture, she dropped out to further her modeling career in Milan. From there she jumped to Paris and then to New York. “Melania was missing something that many small town girls have: fear. This attribute would be good for her life with Trump, ”writes Bennett.
The Knauss were a close-knit Catholic family, which explains their attachment to the institution of marriage and their determination to overcome all obstacles that arise in their path. Through thick and thin with her, but always on her terms. When, a few weeks before the presidential election, The Hollywood Reporter published a recording of Trump bragging about being able to "grab women by the pussy" whenever he wants, he refused to participate in the usual ritual of television apologies as faithful wife.
Her public acts are scarce and she stubbornly shuns the press
There are no dramas with Melania. Her way of punishing her is indifference, marking a freezing distance. Or decide to go to her State of the Nation speech alone, days after Stormy Danniels and Karen McDougal's testimonies were published, withdraw his hand if she's upset with him, or dress in masculine-cut clothing that she dislikes. And the other way around: Melania is also capable of wearing a blouse with a bow whose English name (pussy bow) evoked her husband's unpleasant comment to tell the world that she is above everything, that no one should feel sorry for her. "Coincidences don't exist in Melania Trump's world," says her biographer, a CNN reporter, the only White House correspondent who exclusively covers the first lady.
His public events are much less frequent than with previous first ladies, and he stubbornly shuns the press. But if she does not agree on something, she will say so, as she did with the family separation policy promoted by her husband. Ivanka Trump's attempts to take credit for putting (theoretically) an end to this measure infuriated her. Although the two got along well before arriving in Washington, their relationship - never without competition - has deteriorated. Melania's opinion is valued by the president. It was enough for her to let the president know her displeasure with an adviser to the National Security Council for her to be fired at once.
Their silence is not at all a form of protest. "Like many Slovenians, he is silently judging you or planning his next coup," says Bennet, who denies that Melania opposed her husband running for president or that she thought about staying in New York when he moved into the White House. She did what she said: stay until her son, Barron, the absolute center of her life, finished the course. The boy is the great absent from the book: being a minor, the author has preferred not to talk about him.
The book reveals that the first lady and the president sleep in separate rooms. Melania "prefers her own space, spacious and reserved, in a suite located on another floor" of the White House, several sources have told Bennet. But the physical distance at night does not imply that they do not have a close relationship with the president. The couple is in constant contact during the day and she does not hesitate to give her opinions, "whether she wants to hear them or not." It's a relationship that works for them, Bennett says. The capacity for "survival and resistance" learned under communism, he argues, has helped him overcome lower moments.
There have been few trials of their marriage. The publication of the Hollywood Reporter tape, the testimonies of last year of two women Trump paid not to talk about the adventures they had when she was pregnant, or the publication on the front page of an American newspaper of their nude poses performed in 1996 in France. According to Bennett, Melania suspects that it was Roger Stone, an adviser to her husband, to divert attention from other campaign issues. The American public, conservative or progressive, sided with her. It had been too dirty and unpleasant a campaign to humiliate a woman for posing nude at this point. Other erotic photos that reappeared in the final stretch of the campaign - taken in the businessman's private jet between diamonds and gold tones - had been published on the cover of the men's magazine GQ in 2000 thanks to Trump's contacts, which he wanted to promote his girlfriend's modeling career.
Neither the president nor the first lady's office have reacted to the publication of the book. The title Free, Melania evokes a play on words with the #FreeMelania movement that, a couple of years ago, defended that the first lady sent coded messages to the public to express her disagreement with her husband's policies, a theory that is completely out of place by now . “Melania has never really needed anyone. Company, romance, love… None of these things has ever been at the top of her list of priorities, ”writes Bennett, who does not rule out - nor does she judge - that there is a transactional component in their relationship.
It is formally an unauthorized biography, but the tone is at all times benign and understanding towards its protagonist. Bennett reviews in detail how Melania Trump, in another example of her independent character, set herself apart from other candidate wives with her decision to stay away from the campaign and participate in a limited number of events, leaving the role of de facto partner in Ivanka's hands. The journalist, however, totally ignores the active participation of the former model in the dissemination of conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and limits herself to defining her as "politically conservative."
Donald Trump was the highest standard of the birther movement, the theory born in the sewers of the internet and the most conspiratorial radio waves according to which the former president was not born in Hawaii but in Africa and therefore had no right to be in the White House . Obama ignored the hoax as much as he could but ended up publishing his birth certificate to try to dismantle the insidious theory. Even afterwards they followed the theme. "It's not just Donald who wants to see it, it's the American people," Melania insisted in a television interview, despite the presenter telling him that everyone had seen the role and his claims had no basis. "It seems to us that it is different from other birth certificates," she insisted. "I will never forgive" Trump, Michelle Obama has said about the danger that the dissemination of these theories posed for the safety of his family.
