Melania Trump at the foot of the podium
Uncomfortable on stage, ridiculed by the media, the ex-model and new First Lady promises to be less flamboyant than Michelle Obama.
Disheveled hair and light brown suit, Melania leaves the presidential plane accompanied by her bodyguards before going to take the oath to become… president. These images, a bit premonitory, are taken from a Slovenian advertisement from the 90s, when the young woman, 23, was starting her modeling career. Nothing, however, predestined Melania Trump, née Knavs, from a modest Slovenian family, to one day wear the costume of First Lady. From her childhood in Sevnica, a small communist village in the former Yugoslavia, to her international modeling career which will land her in 1996 in the United States, Melania Trump is the perfect example of the American Dream. "I went through visas, a Green Card before finally becoming American", in 2006, she says proudly.
A course too perfect to be true? No doubt for the Associated Press, which will reveal, two days before the poll, that the ex-model would have worked illegally for two months on her arrival on American soil when she only had a simple tourist visa. . A shame when her husband made the fight against illegal immigration his main campaign axis.
False diploma. Uncomfortable on stage, Melania Trump remained behind throughout the race for the White House. This did not prevent her from accumulating the pans, to the point that some media saw in Ivanka, the eldest daughter of Donald Trump, the real First Lady. Melania Trump was indeed shocked with her speech at the Republican convention in Cleveland (Ohio), partly copied from that of Michelle Obama in 2008, or by lying on her CV: she mentioned a false "diploma in design and architecture at the University of Slovenia ”on its own website, since deleted. "An initiative that was most certainly decided in consultation with Trump and his supporters, since they desperately wanted to give the image of a Slovenian model who would not only be beautiful, but also intelligent and well educated", say Bojan journalists Pozar and Igor Omerza in their unofficial biography titled Melania Trump, The Inside Story: From a Slovenian Communist Village to the White House.
Melania Trump was also the victim of the harassment of the American press. The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, who had nevertheless supported Trump, twice published photos of the nude model dating from 1995. "You have never seen a potential first lady like that!" dare the conservative tabloid. Two American news outlets also claimed that she served as an escort girl in the 1990s, forcing Melania Trump to sue them for defamation.
Difficult under these conditions to succeed the icon Michelle Obama. "It is obvious that the comparison will be formidable, as much because Michelle Obama has done a lot of things in favor of the most disadvantaged and the health of children, as because she is a strong personality, who exists for herself and not as a "wife of" ", estimates Marie-Cécile Naves, researcher associated with Iris and specialist in the United States. Conversely, Melania Trump displays little enthusiasm for politics, describing herself above all as the "full-time mother" of their 10-year-old son Barron.
Her goal as first lady? Fight against cyber-harassment, she said, which earned her a new round of criticism: "Melania Trump should start by changing the password of her husband's Twitter account", iron users, in reference to the countless number of personalities that Trump has insulted through his personal account.
Sexual assault. The eccentric behavior of the real estate mogul does not make his task any easier. When her husband is accused on all sides of sexual assault, Melania Trump stands firm. After the Washington Post broadcast of a video from 2005 in which Trump boasts of being able to "do anything to women" including "grab them by the pussy", she goes to the rescue of her husband. In a rare interview given to CNN, the ex-model minimizes the words of her man, whom she describes as a "gentleman".
And, by the way, accuses the media of being corrupt, an argument widely used by Trump himself. "She is probably a woman stronger than one might think, so much has been done to reduce her to her physical appearance, her husband first", analyzes Marie-Cécile Naves. What the new First Lady confirms: “People don't really know me. They think things about me, they talk about me, "Oh, Melania, oh, poor Melania." Don't have mercy on me. I'm not scared of anything."
