Melania Trump, like America, may be more in love with President Trump than his critics would hope
Bookies started taking bets on Election Day as gamblers considered a question on many people’s minds: Will Melania Trump dump her husband when he is no longer president?
Soon after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, Jimmy Kimmel made a spoof of ''The Bachelorette.'' In it, a woman steps out of a limo to meet a roomful of nervous suitors. The camera pans from her stiletto heel, up her sparkly gown, to her familiar face: It’s Melania Trump! (Her head was superimposed on the body of the actual bachelorette.)
Is Melania Trump really looking forward to being rid of President Trump as much as tens of millions of Americans are? Or is it just another fantasy that Trump critics are projecting on a first lady who has succeeded in shrouding her true self in mystery?
Many who despise Donald Trump imagine that his wife does, too. They point to a few videos of her seeming to refuse to hold her husband’s hand as proof. They also notice that Melania spends a lot of time apart from her husband, and she’s not as publicly affectionate with him as, for instance, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama or Jill Biden are with their husbands. Some have baselessly claimed that Melania has a body double who stands in for her when (they imagine) she refuses to appear at her husband’s side.
Melania Trump keeps a small inner circle, but two people close to her spoke to The Washington Post and said that she has shown no sign of leaving her husband, at least not any time soon. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because they know Melania would not want them to speak to the press. ''She believes her private life is no one’s business,'' said one.)
The first lady has said several times over the past four years that she does not always agree with the president, but in the closing days of the 2020 campaign, she emerged as one of his most ardent cheerleaders. In forceful, highly partisan speeches, she slammed Biden, the Democrats, and the news media while urging people to vote for her husband, the one true leader and ''optimist'' in the race.
''I don’t think Melania leaves Donald. She’s very willingly complicit in his schemes and holds his beliefs as her own,'' said Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, who is under home confinement while finishing out a felony federal sentence for tax fraud and campaign finance violations. ''Those two deserve each other.''
The Trumps are remarkably in sync despite their personality differences, said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and aide who wrote a book that was highly critical of the first lady. ''It’s part of the show. She’s always been the quiet. He’s been the loud. She’s been the soft. He’s been the hard. They play off one another. It’s part of the relationship that makes it work.''
Asked for comment on the fact that people were speculating about the possibility of the Trumps splitting up, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, offered a stern rebuke: ''This question is pathetic and exactly why people no longer trust the mainstream media. No legitimate journalist would ask this.''
The idea that Melania can’t wait to ditch Donald might be a natural extension of the same wishful thinking that led people to assume that the president’s reckless disregard for truth and the norms of presidential behavior would lead to a huge repudiation at the polls. And although Trump lost reelection, that karmic wave never materialized.
Maybe Melania is similar to America: A big part of her admires Donald Trump, even if another part of her is appalled by him.
Melania Trump’s four years as first lady began with ''Free Melania'' memes and ''Saturday Night Live'' sketches depicting her as the princess trapped in Trump Tower, an unwilling political spouse when all she wanted was to be a mother to their teenage son, Barron, and spend time at the Mar-a-Lago spa. (In one ''SNL'' sketch, Melania is portrayed as gentle and lonely, if a bit naive, and starts confiding in a Pakistani customer service representative for Gucci online orders.)
''SNL'' writer Julio Torres, the mastermind behind that and other Melania sketches, said he stopped wanting to write them after the first lady wore her infamous ''I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?'' jacket on a trip to visit immigrant children detained at the US-Mexico border — a message she has said was intended as a dig at her media critics, but which struck many as tone-deaf, given her husband’s ruthless approach to families at the border.
At first, Torres and his colleagues had felt somewhat sorry for Melania Trump. ''And then she started talking and it was like, ‘Oh, you’re not captive. You’re making choices. There is agency. You’re complicit. It’s not the princess in the castle anymore.’ ''
It’s been a trying year for a first lady who values her privacy. Late in the summer, Winston Wolkoff, the former friend and aide, released secret audio recordings in which Melania is heard expressing her views in an unguarded way.
On the tapes, Melania could be heard using strong language when referring to her White House decorating duties (“Who gives a f--- about Christmas stuff and decorations?”) and saying she delighted in ''driving liberals crazy.''
She also sounded heartless when talking about children at the border who had been separated from their parents. Those children had a bed in detention, she could be heard saying, and the United States took better care of them than Mexico did.
The release of those tapes, along with other criticism, has contributed to a bunker mentality in the White House, with both Trumps feeling besieged. Some of those working in the White House attribute that solidarity to why they have appeared closer in 2020 than they did in 2016.
