Melania Trump, this obscure object of power (Arte): investigation of the First Lady
Walled in perpetual silence, the future ex-First Lady does not let anyone see who she really is. Washington correspondent Laurence Haïm paints her portrait in a documentary - Melania Trump, this obscure object of power - broadcast on Arte, Friday, January 15, at 10:25 p.m.
We say of certain people that we read them as in an open book. Quite the opposite of Melania Trump, mystery embodied, on which Laurence Haïm has been investigating since 2017. We first learn that far from having known the miserable childhood that legend attributes to her, the one who was still called Melanija has was raised in the small affluent suburb of Svenica, in present-day Slovenia, where she was born in 1970. As a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party, her father, Viktor Knavs, indeed enjoyed a comfortable salary, despite poverty. who reigned in the country.
His father, Viktor, fundamental in his life
Like the one who will become his son-in-law, Viktor was fascinated by his daughter's grace and began to present her in beauty pageants when she was only 7 years old. “Even today, he is a fundamental figure in Melania's life. He is very present at her side and often accompanies her to their property in Palm Beach. He and his wife gave Donald Trump a European family. And he is, like Trump, built on the patriarchal model of the protective macho, ”comments Laurence Haïm.
Later, after a course in architecture started in a vocational high school and continued at the university, Melania will simply disappear from circulation for three years. None of her biographers, even the most determined, is able to explain where the student and model was at this time. "Melania is extremely well preserved, it is an object of millimeter communication, so we will probably never know the truth about it", specifies Laurence Haïm.
Melania and Donald, a strangely united couple
It was at the dawn of the 2000s that she met the real estate mogul in New York, with whom she married in 2005. Since then, Donald and Melania Trump had a boy, Barron William, in 2006, and seem to have remained strangely united, despite the infidelities and sexual scandals dragged by the American president. “Maybe because it was really about a love affair between them. And certainly because it offered him a luxurious living environment, a destiny made in Trump, ”concludes the journalist.
