Melania's life after the White House and the Trump administration
If you were a fly on the wall of the White House, where would you have wanted to be on Saturday?
Not seeing Donald Trump when he came home from his golf game: his anger and denial were too predictable. Without looking at Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: his discouragement and growing alarm were equally expected from him.
The vantage point was undoubtedly the place where Melania Trump was, to see how the news was taken.
On election night 2016, we know how she felt.
"Melania was crying, and not with joy," wrote Michael Wolff in his book Fire and Fury, in an account endorsed by other reporters.
Well on Saturday she may have felt the same, this time, however, with tears of relief. The 50-year-old Slovenian model has done little to dispel rumors of her reluctance to play the first lady game.
Some went further, with former White House official Omarosa Manigault Newman stating that she planned to divorce her husband as soon as she could, after the presidency.
"Melania is counting every minute until he leaves office and she can get a divorce," she said.
"If Melania tried to do the ultimate humiliation and walked away from her while he's in office, he would find a way to punish her."
It was unclear if the former contestant on the TV show was close enough to the first lady to know how she was feeling. Manigault Newman was fired from the White House and left after a year, then released an explosive memoir of her time there and on-air recordings she had made inside the Situation Room, in a very unusual violation of protocol. .
Also, the first lady is known to be intensely reserved and with few close confidants: behind the expensive smile and icy glamor, does anyone really know what's going on?
She is so elusive that the internet has reveled in the "Fake Melania" theories, endlessly speculating whether she has a dual role in events she would rather not attend.
CNN reported Saturday that Melania was inside the White House, "reserved to herself" and not participating in any strategy sessions with other members of the Trump family or senior administration officials.
However, she tweeted on Sunday her support for her husband's argument.
"The American people deserve fair elections," she said. “All legal votes, not illegal, must be counted. We must protect our democracy with total transparency ”.
Trump's next move will be motivated by two things: the well-being of his 14-year-old son Barron, and money.
Many sympathized with Trump in the early days of the campaign and his presidency; after all, she wasn't the first glamorous woman to marry a billionaire 25 years her senior.
That soon soured when he began taking action straight out of Donald Trump's playbook, such as threatening legal action against the delighted residents of his small Slovenian hometown who were promoting his image, and alleging in court documents that highly defamatory accusations about her. they spoiled their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity "as first lady" to launch a broad-based trademark across multiple product categories. "
It is assumed that Trump, like the two women who were Trump's wives before her, has a prenuptial agreement.
Ivana Trump, married to Trump from 1977 to 1992, had four prenuptial agreements, amended as she increased her fortune, with the last one serving as the basis for her explosive and sensational divorce. She received $ 25 million (£ 19 million) plus the couple's Greenwich mansion, and $ 650,000 annually for raising her three children: Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka and Eric.
The bitter and very public divorce battle led Trump to insist on a confidentiality agreement (NDA) written into his prenuptial agreement with Marla Maples, to whom he was married from 1993 to 1999.
His divorce came just before a four-year wedding anniversary specified in their prenuptial agreement that would have increased Maples's potential settlement from the original $ 1 million to $ 5 million.
The first lady has been married to Trump for 15 years, as long as Ivana Trump.
She played a significantly lesser role in increasing his business; Ivana Trump was a senior executive in the Trump Organization and was heavily involved in its corporate affairs, while Melania Trump has never taken an interest in the company.
Yet she has been vital to her brand, and her former friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff claims that she remained in New York for the first 10 weeks of her presidency to rewrite her prenup, guaranteeing a stake. equitable on Barron's family fortune.
In the early days of her presidency, she likely largely got what she wanted, provided she stayed by his side during her time in the White House.
Winston Wolkoff, one of Trump's few close friends, met her in 2003, when they were both 32 years old, and Winston Wolkoff worked at Vogue.
Whenever Trump's behavior attracted attention, his wife was optimistic: "I know who I married," she used to say.
Winston Wolkoff writes in Melania and Me, her wild memoirs of her time helping Trump in the White House, that she was "in awe of his unwavering composure" and says that Melania "is honest, she is loving, she values her privacy above all else. things, and he's true to his core values in a way that Donald could never be. "
She is represented as serene, serene, self-possessed and very content with her lonely existence.
Winston Wolkoff believes that Trump loved her husband, in a way, but she is also just as calculating and manipulative as he is.
The "I Don't Care Do U" jacket, which she wears to visit migrant children, was a way of expressing her anger; The "Operation Ivanka Block", an attempt to prevent the "first daughter" from stealing the spotlight, was another.
Kate Bennett, a CNN correspondent and author of Free Melania, writes that Melania Trump sleeps in a room on the third floor of the executive residence, where Michelle Obama's mother lived during the Obama presidency.
Trump reportedly sleeps in the master bedroom on the first floor.
So what will his life be like outside the White House?
She might as well walk away from Trump, on time, depending on the stipulations of the prenup.
The former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, left office in December 2018: in February, his wife, the soap opera actress, announced that she would leave him.
It is unclear whether Trump would have allowed for such humiliation.
It is still feasible for her to live in Mar-a-Lago, after the presidency, to avoid her hatred for him in her hometown of New York. He would have more freedom and a warmer welcome; Then Trump could resume his life inside Trump Tower.
His social media accounts of his life prior to the presidency provide insightful insight into what his life might be like after her.
"He lives behind glass, in cars, in his house, in private jets and private resorts," Kate Imbach wrote in a viral Medium post, describing her as a "fairy tale prisoner by choice."
Ms. Imbach analyzed the 470 photos posted on social media in the three-year period between June 3, 2012 and June 11, 2015, and found that almost all of them were taken behind glass: car windows or windows of Trump Tower.
"She doesn't even get out of the car to see landmarks or walk in the park," she said.
