Melania Trump: the unusual conciliatory speech of the first lady who prefers to "stay out of politics"
It was, perhaps, her most important speech since she arrived at the White House as first lady.
Although she has stayed away from podiums and speeches in recent years, Melania Trump, the wife of the president of the United States, joined other members of the family on Tuesday at the Republican Convention, where her husband will accept the nomination on Thursday. of the party for the November 3 elections.
During her speech in one of the White House gardens, with an audience seated a short distance away and without a mask, the first lady began her speech with an emotional message about the coronavirus and her impact on the United States. .
"They are not alone," she told people who have suffered from covid-19 or lost their loved ones, to later recognize that "the invisible enemy swept through our beautiful country and impacted us all."
It was an unusual recognition in a Convention that for now has avoided focusing on the damage of the pandemic in the country most affected by the coronavirus in the world.
In defense of her husband, who has been harshly criticized for the way he has handled the pandemic, the first lady assured that Trump will not stop until he finds a solution to the coronavirus.
"My husband will not stop until there is a vaccine for everyone. Donald will not rest until there is a cure for this pandemic," she said.
During her lengthy message, Slovenian-born Melania Trump touched on her personal story, thanked her family, and addressed her process to obtain her US citizenship.
"As first lady I have seen the American dream come true over and over again," she said.
She also asked the media to focus on coverage of the virus and claimed that she did not use divisive language because the nation needed unity, one of the few messages of reconciliation so far in the Republican Convention.
Other keys to the speech
Melania Trump urged Americans to stop making assumptions based on race and critically reflect on American history.
"Like all of you, I have reflected on the racial unrest in our country," she said.
"It is a stark reality that we are not proud of parts of our history. I encourage you to focus on the future while continuing to learn from the past."
The first lady also urged Americans to "come together in a civilized way" so that they can "work and live up to our ideals."
"I also ask people to stop the violence and looting that is carried out in the name of justice, and never make assumptions based on the color of a person's skin," he said, referring to the racial protests that have rocked the country in recent months.
A "traditional" first lady
Glamorous and completely dedicated to her husband and her success, Melania Trump has been seen as something of a retro presidential spouse, a modern Jackie Kennedy.
Like former First Lady Kennedy, Melania, now 46, speaks four languages: Slovenian, French, German and English.
When Trump first hinted that she would be running for president in 1999, he told reporters, "(Melania) would be very traditional (as first lady), like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy."
But she is not such a traditional first lady, as, for example, she was the first to have posed nude for a magazine before arriving at the White House.
And in early 2016 a lewd telephone interview by radio host Howard Stern resurfaced with the Trump couple asking them what Melania is wearing ("almost nothing") and how often they had sex ("every night , sometimes more").
Melania also sued the Daily Mail for an article that she claimed suggested she was a sex worker in the 1990s.
The newspaper agreed to pay damages and apologized to the first lady in April 2017.
From Slovenia to New York
The first lady was born Melanija Knavs in Sevnica, a small town an hour's drive from Slovenian capital Ljubljana, to a relatively wealthy family.
Her father, Viktor, worked for the mayor of nearby Hrastnik before becoming a successful car salesman. Her mother, Amalija, designed prints for a fashion brand.
Melania studied design and architecture in Ljubljana. On her professional website it said that she had a degree, but it later emerged that she dropped out of college during the freshman year. The website has now been completely removed and redirects to Trump's business site.
At 18, she signed with a modeling agency in Milan and began flying across Europe and the United States, appearing in high-profile ad campaigns.
She was at a New York fashion week party where she met Trump.
Like her husband, she reportedly never drinks and avoids late-night parties.
She has her own jewelry business and it is said that she participates in the design process.
They married in 2005 and had a son, Barron, in 2006.
In the white house
Initially, she did not move into the White House with her husband after his election victory. She remained in New York until the end of Barron's school term and joined the president in Washington in 2017.
Melania has justified her husband's attacks on immigration and for this she has highlighted her own personal history, saying that she carried out the process of nationalization of her according to the laws.
"It never crossed my mind to be here without papers," she told Harpers Bazaar. "You follow the rules. You follow the law. Every few months you need to fly back to Europe and have your visa stamped."
"Politics is my husband's job"
Melania Trump has largely stayed out of the political fray, limiting her appearances to being alongside her husband.
"I chose not to go into politics," she said in an interview with GQ. "Policies are my husband's job."
Her only great moment of the 2016 campaign came when she took center stage on the first day of the Republican National Convention in July of that year for the traditional marital speech… And it didn't go well.
Commentators quickly noted striking similarities to Michelle Obama, wife of President Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention speech, and the resulting plagiarism scandal overshadowed what she had to say.
Much better was her emotional speech on Monday, more focused on the humanitarian than on the political.
In 2018 she generated a lot of controversy after wearing a jacket with the words "I really don't care, what about you?" written on the back of her jacket during a trip to a detention center for migrant children.
"It was because of the people and the left-wing media criticizing me," she told ABC News of the message. "I want to show them that I don't care."
Despite incidents, she is a great stranger compared to her predecessors. She says that she advises her husband, but she does not reveal on what.
"Nobody knows and nobody will know, because that is something between my husband and me," she said in GQ magazine.
