Melania Trump is once again in an uncomfortable spotlight
Four people from Donald Trump's team in the White House have resigned immediately after the assault on the Capitol. They are White House Deputy Speaker Sarah Matthews, First Lady Melania Trump's Chief of Staff, Stephanie Grisham, White House Head of Social Events Anna Cristina Nicet, and the Deputy National Security Counselor of the White House, Matt Pottinger. "It has been an honor to serve my country in the White House. I am very proud to have been part of First Lady Melania Trump's mission to help children and the accomplishments of this Administration," said Stephanie Grisham.
A gesture that many interpret as support for Donald Trump's wife who is in the spotlight for several reasons. The future is uncertain, both due to the drift of events - which has led to the talk of dismissal - and the intense rumors of divorce that the American social press does not stop feeding.
In November 2020, the statements of Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former Trump employee, were published and the rumors gained more force. "Melania is counting the minutes so that he leaves his mandate from her and can divorce her. If she tried to humiliate him and leave him while he is president, he would find a way to punish her," she said. It rains in the wet as the book by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump's former confidant, revealed details of the First Lady not known until then, such as her difficult relationship with Ivanka Trump.
Donald Trump and Melania are going to celebrate 15 years of marriage but it is doubted that they will be able to celebrate their 'crystal wedding' on January 22, 2021. But not all of them are so critical or negative about them. Some close associates say there will be no divorce and that this is just tabloid rumors.
But it's hard to know what Melania thinks. She is an opaque woman who does not usually show her feelings, opinions and ideas. She is the great unknown, an inaccessible tower that the press is now trying to reach. She succeeded Michelle Obama on January 20, 2017. It was difficult for her, as her predecessor was very popular and was widely accepted by society, the press (especially the fashion press) and celebrities, from Lady Gaga to Beyoncé. All the stars love Michelle!
Melania was the First Lady whose native language is not English, the first of non-American origin and the second born abroad after the British Louisa Adams, wife of the sixth president, John Quincy Adams.
Melania was in no rush to settle in the White House. Five months have passed since Trump moved from New York to Washington in January 2017 until she and her son Barron set out on the same path, five months full of gossip about her private life that she silenced upon arriving in the capital. .
She is as reserved as she is mysterious, and she has turned silence into a way of life: she has never commented on the controversies and scandals -also sexual- of her husband and, except for her insignificant official agenda, she lives devoted to her son. She is 50 years old and her work is limited to issues such as combating online harassment of minors with the campaign called "Be Best", an initiative with which she has sought her own voice in the White House but that it has not had much impact.
Journalist Mary Jordan, author of the book on Melania Trump 'The Art of Her Deal' explains that the first lady, her parents and Barron form a nucleus within the family nucleus of the Trumps. "Barron Trump speaks Slovenian, he is very close to Melania's father. Both parents spend a lot of time in the White House, living there. There is a nucleus within the family nucleus and it is made up of Melania, her mother, her father and Barron. And all of them they speak Slovenian, "he said in an interview.
Her real name is Melania Knauss. She grew up in a modest apartment in a town near Sevnica (Slovenia), which was then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FSYR), dissolved in 1992 with the Balkan War. After starting her modeling career in Milan and Paris, she moved to New York in 1996. Five years later she obtained her permanent residence and in 2006 she became a naturalized American.
She is extremely careful when discussing her married life with Trump. They met at a party during New York Fashion Week. It was 1998 and they were married 7 years later. "We are both very independent. I let him be who he is and he lets me be who I am. I'm not trying to change him, he's an adult," she once said on CNN. The cameras have captured on occasion how Melania seems to reject the hand of her husband, a fact that has unleashed all kinds of comments. Donald Trump, oblivious, says his wife is "an awesome mother and amazing woman." The next few days will be decisive to know what will happen to the Trump marriage, both at an institutional level and at a personal level.
