The secret art behind Melania Trump's smile
It is unlikely that the words came from her husband's pen or keyboard, but Melania Trump could have found inspiration in her book The Art of The Deal (something like The Art of Closing a Good Deal) to make the most of time. that elapsed between Donald Trump's inauguration as president on January 20, 2017, and his suspiciously late transfer to the White House, on June 11 of that year.
Officially, she stayed in New York to "take care of Barron," her son, now a lanky 14-year-old. But that plan included not only ensuring that the boy finished the school year where he started but also renegotiating the prenuptial agreement that the model of Slovenian origin had signed with the real estate mogul in 2005, according to a new biography of the enigmatic first lady of The United States entitled precisely The Art of Her Deal, published today by Mary Jordan, renowned investigative journalist for The Washington Post.
Donald Trump wrote in 1987 that “the best thing you can do is negotiate from a position of strength, having something to leverage with is your greatest strength (...). That means having something the other person wants. Or you need. Or, even better, something you can't do without ”. The day the businessman won the presidential election, Melania Trump was something that he wanted, that he really needed, without what he could not do. And she took advantage of it.
Donald and Melania Trump are soul mates, says Jordan, renowned investigative journalist
None of the New Yorker's previous marriages had lasted as long as this one. During the campaign, Melania had known to be an asset to the candidate, especially valuable in the final stretch, when the famous tapes of The Holywood Reporter full of degrading comments for women came to light. “I have accepted my husband's apology. I think the American people will accept them too, ”Melania said, making it clear that she didn't want anyone's pity.
Jordan denies, as other biographies have done, that the former model did not want her husband to run for office. Unlike. She kept telling her to stop talking about it and to do it, she would win. But when her prediction came true after a wild campaign, Melania Trump decided she needed to buy time and reassess the situation.
Whenever her husband left the White House, he was unlikely to return to business. It was time to worry about her future and that of her son, ensuring that Barron would have “her fair share of the inheritance” and a role within the Trump Organization like her brothers, “especially if Ivanka took the reins,” she writes. Jordan. The beginnings of the new Administration were chaotic. In Washington, the president's friends missed the soothing effect the first lady has on him. The urge to return to her side worked in her favor. The prenuptial contract was renegotiated. After completing the course, she finally moved to Washington.
Her decision to stay in New York had its risks. Rumors about the nature of her marriage raged and the upheavals caused to New Yorkers by the protection that the Secret Service had to give her and her son when he went to school or moved around the city earned her a lot of negative publicity. In his absence, the president's eldest daughter - raised under the spotlight and delighted to show her children to the public, unlike Melania, always very jealous of her privacy - made the White House her own.
The new biography reveals that Ivanka - appointed special adviser, along with her husband Jared Kushner, in an unprecedented double exercise of nepotism - proposed to Melania to change the name of the Office of the First Lady, located in the east wing of the White House, by the Office of the First Family. The president's wife refused. It was a tradition and should not be changed, she successfully claimed.
Because when Melania says something, she goes to mass, according to this and other biographies, which shatter the image of fragility that the first faces of the first lady transmitted and some Americans thought that she was actually a hostage of Trump who sent them signals encrypted that it wanted to be released. Nothing could be further from reality, insists Jordan, who presents her rather as a necessary cooperator of his plans and policies. Independent and with her own criteria, as when she distanced herself from the policy of separating immigrant families from her husband, but perfectly aligned.
Despite his outgoing nature and her privacy, Jordan describes the couple as kindred, complementary. Just as Trump has always exaggerated his triumphs, his wealth and his abilities, years ago Melania Trump (Novo Mesto, 1970) claimed to have a degree in architecture in Slovenia, when after a year she dropped out of school to further her modeling career, which it would take to Milan, Paris and New York. She has defined herself as a super model but the label does not exactly match her achievements and there is no evidence that she actually speaks five languages. A spokeswoman for the White House affirms that the book - based on more than 100 interviews, on the record and off the microphone - is "a work of fiction."
