Melania Trump is as businesslike as her husband
Melania Trump only moved into the White House after she renegotiated her prenuptial agreement. That and more is in a biography about the first lady, which will be released Tuesday.
In public only generalities escape from her mouth and you can hardly read her face: it always remains in the fold, safely hidden behind an impeccable layer of make-up. The most enigmatic figure from the Donald Trump coterie is without a doubt his wife Melania. What's really about the reclusive first lady? It often remains a mystery, and that makes all the more curious.
There have been a lot of Melaniah who thought that in her choice of clothing they found all kinds of clues to her personal well-being and political views. Or who projected on her their own discomfort about Trump's presidency: soon after the inauguration, the hashtag #FreeMelania became popular, which suggested that Melania was an unfortunate prisoner in her own marriage.
In The Art of her Deal biography, out Tuesday, The Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan makes an attempt to color the image of Melania Trump with facts. But although she interviewed more than a hundred people for it, it was not easy to get a clear picture of the life story of the woman who came into the world in 1970 in a small town in the then communist Yugoslavia. The child of an auto mechanic and textile worker who eventually made it to the White House. The people who experienced her in her youth also found it difficult to understand her.
Dual nationality
"In my three decades of working as a correspondent around the world, I have written often about reticent and withdrawn people, including the head of a Mexican drug cartel and a Japanese princess," Jordan writes. "But all of that pales in trying to understand Melania Trump."
Nevertheless, the biography does contain a number of news facts that shed more light on the role of Melania. The glamiest is about her decision to live with her son Barron in New York for a while after Trump's election win. Officially to let him finish his school year, but Jordan reveals that Melania also used the situation, which left Trump in an awkward position, to renegotiate the prenuptial agreement.
For example, she managed to secure a substantial part of the inheritance for their son Barron, and she stipulated that she and Barron could retain their dual citizenship - both are not only American but also Slovenian citizens.
When she eventually moved into the White House, another power struggle ensued with Trump's daughter Ivanka. In the absence of her stepmother - with whom she saves twelve years in age - it had already partly installed herself in the east wing, usually the domain of the first lady. But Ivanka's plans to transform the First Lady's Office, the civil service organization that supports the president's wife, into a First Family's Office were blocked by Melania.
Calculating and on its own
Add to that fierce power struggle knowing that Melania and Donald sleep in separate rooms, and you'd almost come to believe in the image of a cold, calculating marriage. But that's not the conclusion Jordan draws.
Because Melania and her husband are very much alike: they are both businesslike, calculating, and individual. Perhaps that is why the president attaches great importance to his wife's judgment; she's the first he calls after a political rally, and she's also the one who can criticize him.
Jordan leaves little to the image of Melania a prisoner in her marriage. She even said Melania was the one who pushed her husband to finally stop talking about a possible run for president and actually do it. And she also supports him in his re-election.
That does not mean that Melania is an open book for Donald Trump. According to Jordan, he regularly complains that his wife and Barron mainly speak Slovenian, and that he doesn't understand anything.
