Melania Trump: "My husband's escapades? They don't surprise me, I know who I married"
Anyone who has the image of a reluctant, clumsy, marginalized American first lady within the Trump clan or the presidential palace and at the mercy of her bulky husband will have to think again.
"Melania and Me", written by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, longtime friend of Melania Trump and later her assistant and counselor at the White House, gives us an unpublished portrait of the former Slovenian model: lucid, pragmatic, a steely determination.
But often also a brusque and rough woman with her co-workers.
"Sometimes thanks doesn't seem to be part of her vocabulary," writes Wolkoff, who still describes Melania as someone who doesn't like to be given orders or put their feet on their heads by anyone, be it the tycoon or her daughter Ivanka.
The first daughter who would like to steal the show from her and whom Melania ironically calls "princess" in private: "You know, she and Jared are two snakes", she once wrote in a message sent to Wolkoff. The underlying plot of the book, out this week, is the descending parable of the relationship between the author and Melania, in the past inseparable friends, like two sisters, now distant after their relationship, which has become more and more working over time. , it broke.
But "Melania and Me" for the first time sheds a light on the one who in public, the few times she allows herself, appears a Sphinx, with an impenetrable gaze that makes her the most inscrutable first lady in American history together with Pat Nixon to whom it is often approached. So we read that Melania, among the many teases concocted against the first daughter, with her friend and collaborator Stephanie set up what was called "Operation Blocking Ivanka", when on the day of the 2017 Inauguration Day a plan to prevent the tycoon's daughter from obscuring the first lady in the photos. Then it is told how Melania, who at the beginning of Trump's presidency stayed in Trump Tower in New York with her son Barron, would have refused to move to the White House if the bathroom and shower used by Barack and Michelle had not been completely renovated first. Obama.
And in private he would often have mocked the latter, both for choosing to wear strictly American designer clothes and accusing her of criticizing Trump's hard line on immigration without ever having gone to the border with Mexico as she did.
Finally, the delicate chapter of marriage, with a Melania who is described as anything but under the influence of The Donald. Indeed, the first lady likes to tell how she is the only person who really manages to calm the tycoon when he is furious, explaining how the secret of her long relationship lies in her ability to know how to take her husband in the right direction: "I am different from Marla and Ivana - he would like to say referring to the tycoon's previous wives - I don't put any pressure on Donald and he never feels under pressure with me ".
And the alleged extramarital affairs? "I'm not surprised, I know who I married", would be Melania's terse reply.
