Despite a handful of revelations about her speech stolen from Michelle Obama, the Netanyahu couple, or what looks very much like an obsession with limousines, the former First Lady of the United States’ book is poorly written and deadly boring. Save yourself the trouble: here’s everything you need to know.
“In my life, I have witnessed many extraordinary events and met incredible people,” Melania Trump writes in Melania’s foreword, as if to prepare her readers for the pile-up of platitudes to come. While it’s a cliché in the publishing world to summarize a new book by its reading time, I confess: I read Melania in one sitting in just a few hours, shortly after its release. It should be noted, however, that I did so for strictly professional reasons, as the publisher Skyhorse refused to send Vanity Fair a promotional copy in advance of its publication date. And to be clear, I would not recommend that anyone do the same.
Over the course of its 256 pages (including the substantial photo insert, which takes up quite a bit of it), Melania Trump puts her life into words—too many, some would say, and never quite the right ones—clumsily grouped around a few central themes: grudges, moments of joy, her motherhood, her special ability to communicate with Donald Trump, a few curious anecdotes involving the great and the good, and lots and lots of limousines.
The book contains pretty much everything one would expect from Donald Trump’s partner. There, a lopsided and vague look back at the 2020 election (she castigates “the media, Big Tech, and the Deep State” and perpetuates unfounded allegations of “suspicious campaign activity”); here, a dig at the trad wife movement (“My priority has always been to ensure his well-being, carefully tending to every aspect of his life,” she writes of her early marriage and, later, “my career nearly overshadowed the most important role of all: being a devoted mother”).
An immediate “feeling of comfort and well-being” in her first limo
She also devotes a lot of ink to detailing the compliments she has received. Like after her appearance on the QVC shopping channel: “Viewers would call to compliment my style and my jewelry: ‘It’s so nice to listen to you talk. I really like your style, I really like your jewelry.’” » Elsewhere, she writes, “People would regularly ask me about my diet, marveling at how healthy my skin was.” She notes that she was “delighted to hear [her] name also called out, amidst the cheers” during the 2016 presidential election, as she left the polling station where she cast a ballot for her husband Donald (it’s amazing how much the Trumps are cheered in this book, a veritable festival of shouting, singing, and loud applause).
It’s hardly surprising, after all, that Melania, the granddaughter of a famous Slovenian onion farmer and, by her own account, possessing a “deep appreciation for the finer things in life,” would feel at home wherever it shines. Her origin story is full of anecdotes designed to refute “the dark and inaccurate image of her youth” in her native Slovenia: from her father’s collection of “exquisite vehicles”—Ford Mustangs, BMWs, Ford Cougar XR7s, “prestigious Mercedes-Benzes,” Citroën Maserati SMs—to her “private nanny,” an alternative to preschool, who baked elaborate cakes for her and her sister.
When she arrives in New York after landing a modeling gig, she writes that the limousine sent to the airport by her new employers “exuded elegance.” “I immediately felt a sense of comfort and well-being.” The night she meets Donald at a party at the Kit Kat Club, she arrives in a “spotless black limousine.” She doesn’t forget the two limousines that she, Donald Trump, Michelle and Barack Obama rode in on the day of her husband’s inauguration and includes a photo of herself in the presidential limousine, nicknamed “The Beast.” Her enthusiasm and vision of New York is limited to the “chic boutiques of Madison Avenue and the bustling streets of the Financial District.” She lingers on descriptions of her wedding dress and her inauguration outfits. “In my couture gown, I danced with my husband to the timeless melody of Frank Sinatra’s iconic ‘My Way’ at the Liberty Ball and the Freedom Ball.”
“‘I think it’s very sexy for a woman to be pregnant,’ I explained to Vogue readers, to make it clear that I think a pregnant woman is very attractive.”
At times, Melania displays the narrative instinct of a dog in a fish market, following her scent from one tantalizing scent to another, launching into anecdotes only to abandon them halfway through. Several times, I found myself flipping back and forth through the pages of my Kindle, wondering if there was a paragraph missing here or there. She begins a section with: “It was a Saturday in October, seemingly a weekend like any other, when my memories of 9/11 flooded over me.” » No memory of 9/11 has been mentioned in the story so far, although she briefly mentions seeing the Twin Towers standing “proudly against the skyline” when she arrived in New York in 1998. It then moves on to an explanation of the difference between weekends and weekdays at the White House, followed by a scene in which her husband invites her to the crisis team during the mission to eliminate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a leading member of the Islamic State (President Trump himself seemed to get a bit confused between Hamza and Osama bin Laden and al-Baghdadi). It ends with a memory of Melania presenting a medal to Conan the Belgian Malinois, but the 9/11 connection remains unexplored.
“The process was not easy,” she writes of her obtaining American citizenship, but we don’t learn more about it. In her account of a trip to Japan, she informs us that she does not eat raw fish. Why? We do not yet know. In the chapter where she details her experience of the assassination attempt on her husband last July, she writes: “It was a relatively quiet Saturday in Bedminster. Barron was outside exercising. I was still working on my project.” What project? Mystery. The repetitions are legion: “‘I think it’s very sexy for a woman to be pregnant,’ I explained to Vogue readers, in order to clarify that I find a pregnant woman very attractive.” She attributes the origin of the “Be Best” campaign to the online harassment targeting her son Barron, which she calls “not only cruel but intrusive,” particularly this video of the teenager posted by Rosie O’Donnell, in which she wondered if the young man was autistic. “There’s nothing shameful about being autistic,” Melania says, “but Barron is not autistic.”
A First Stand on Abortion
A very sad story, but like many others, a victim of Melania’s tendency to ignore useful information in favor of unconditional – even irrational – and systematic support for her husband. “I had the feeling that she was attacking my son because she didn’t like my husband,” she writes about the American comedian. It all started when Donald extended a helping hand to Miss USA, offering her the support she desperately needed to overcome her addiction. His act of kindness not only changed her life, but it also sent a powerful message: with compassion and understanding, we can help others overcome their difficulties.”
She ends a paragraph about what she calls the “cancel mafia” with this ominous cliffhanger: “As we would soon learn, cancel culture in America extends far beyond social media and the corporate world.” But instead of segueing into her account of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, she takes a quick detour into a not-so-unnoticed paragraph about abortion, which begins with a line that sounds like it came straight out of a business executive’s memoir: “I live my life based on a set of core principles that form a foundation for making rational, coherent decisions.” » We continue with a dozen paragraphs where Melania gives her point of view on abortion – this first public stance on the subject, after years of her husband’s boasting about having unraveled the right to abortion in the United States, comes in the last pages of the book –, like this outburst, which paraphrases Donald Trump’s oft-repeated alarmist remarks on late-term abortion: “It is important to note that historically,” she writes, “most abortions performed during the last stages of pregnancy are the result of serious fetal abnormalities...” Once she has given this pledge to voters likely to vote for Trump without this damned story about banning abortion, she pivots to finally explain the personal indignity she felt when FBI agents searched her belongings.
In at least one place, she cites passages from earlier interviews and statements without specifying their source: her description of where she was on January 6 [2021, the date of the storming of the Capitol in Washington] is a verbatim copy of an interview she gave to Fox News in 2022: “Months in advance, I had assembled a skilled team of photographers, archivists, and designers to work with me in the White House to ensure flawless execution. As planned, we set a date of January 6, 2021, to complete the work on behalf of our nation.”
“Having grown up under a communist regime, I can say that the pervasive surveillance of the state shaped my childhood experience.”
The book is rife with false starts and other shaky transitions. Was it written in a hurry? Did the publisher simply not do their job of editing? It’s hard to say. In 2020, Alan Dershowitz, another Skyhorse author, explained the publishing process to Vanity Fair: “I did my book on defending the Constitution, defending Trump; they released it three or four days after I finished it.” He described the books published by the publisher as “first drafts.” The autobiography’s launch was also unorthodox: When CNN requested an interview with Melania Trump to coincide with the book’s release, a Skyhorse representative demanded a nondisclosure agreement and a $250,000 payment in return. CNN declined, of course, and Tony Lyons, Skyhorse’s editor, later called the strange request an “internal miscommunication.”
The former first lady is no stranger to contradiction. “Even though Slovenia was part of communist Yugoslavia at the time, it was a different kind of communism than the Soviet Union. As a child, I felt closer to our Italian or Austrian neighbors than to other communist countries in Eastern Europe.” But she later writes, “Growing up in a communist regime, I can say that the state’s pervasive surveillance shaped my childhood experience.” She attacks trans athletes before exonerating herself: “As many of you know, I fully support the LGBTQIA+ community.” Even when she emphasizes the “mess” of the 2020 election, she begins with an odd phrasing: “In November, I didn’t know if Donald Trump would win the election. In a race this close, it’s hard to tell.”
For Melania, defeat and failure are always the work of nebulous, evil conspirators or the incompetence of a third party. At a Slovenian modeling contest in the early 1990s: “It was hard not to see the buzz around another candidate who seemed to have the right connections. My instincts were right: the other girl won first place.” Her own success in modeling? She attributes it to her “professionalism” and “punctuality.” The debacle over her 2016 RNC speech, which bore eerie similarities to a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama, she blames on her husband’s slovenly campaign team: “‘Why wasn’t that speech fact-checked?’ I asked Donald, frustrated. He expressed his disappointment but was unable to give me an answer… When I discovered that the team had not done their job well, I felt a deep sense of betrayal.”
Her goal: “The market for great skin care”
Her reluctance, in some cases, to use proper names gives several anecdotes an oddly elliptical quality: “After lengthy negotiations, the CEO of a multinational investment bank decided to end discussions about a proposed special purpose acquisition company, ‘Melania Trump Technology.’” When she writes about the Black Lives Matter protests, she refers not to George Floyd but to “a black resident of Minneapolis.” Some familiar figures, such as former Vice Presidents Mike and Karen Pence, are completely absent.
She rehashes years-old, pointless feuds, such as the one with a cosmetics distributor that blew a deal to market her now-defunct Melania Caviar Complex C6 skincare line. While she often refers to “all the things that could have been accomplished in a second term,” her most concrete goal in the book is, “I hope that in the future, under more favorable circumstances, I will have the opportunity to bring great skincare to the market.” She complains about not being allowed to measure the White House before moving in, and blames the infamous “I really don’t care do u?” jacket incident on Stephanie Grisham, whom she refers to only as “my press secretary” in the book.
It’s also Grisham’s fault that she didn’t see fit to respond to the violent events of January 6. “At 2:25 p.m., I received a message from my press secretary, who was not at the White House; I don’t even know if she was in Washington,” she wrote. “I was not aware of the events that were unfolding at the Capitol… If I had been fully informed of all the details, I would of course have immediately denounced the violence that occurred at the Capitol.”
For the most part, however, instead of potentially illuminating personal opinions or glimpses of private moments—the couple’s discussions about Donald’s decision to run for office, for example—we are treated to endless, empty accounts of her participation in major public events, almost as if she had asked Chat GPT for stage directions on how to play the perfect wife during her husband’s presidency.
Melania Trump in Africa: A Look Back at Five Days of Style and Diplomatic Disaster
On the day Trump announced his candidacy for president, she describes what she told Barron’s: “We’ll go to Dad’s office together, and then he’ll meet the family in the lobby and wait for Dad and me to come down the escalator to the mezzanine. Dad will make a speech and then it’ll be official.” » In case the reader didn’t quite get it, she continues: “While I wasn’t involved in planning the announcement—those details were handled by Donald, his advisors, and his adult children—the idea was simple: Donald and I would ride the escalator down, Ivanka would introduce her father, Donald would give a short speech, and then we would all pose for pictures on the stage.” And, in case anyone was wondering how the couple got from one floor of the building to the next: “Just before 11 a.m., Donald and I took the elevator down to the mezzanine, where a large and very enthusiastic crowd had gathered to greet us… Donald approached the mezzanine railing and looked down at the people below. He waved and gave me a two-thumbs-up before guiding me with his left hand toward the escalator.” I got on [sic] in front of him, and we got off...” Upon seeing the crowd, she quotes her husband: “Wow. Wow. That’s a lot of people.”
“In Private, Donald Is a Perfect Gentleman”
Readers hoping to get a glimpse of the intimacy of Mr. and Mrs. Trump’s relationship will be disappointed; perhaps in part because Melania seems to think she has a secret understanding of her husband that has been nurtured since the early days of their relationship and is impossible to share with the outside world: “As I got to know him better, I realized that the public only saw part of Donald Trump. In private, he is a perfect gentleman, tender and caring,” she writes, before describing what sounds suspiciously, for want of detail, like a potential breach of medical confidentiality. “For example, Donald still calls my personal physician to check on me, to make sure I’m okay and that he’s taking excellent care of me.” »
She describes this time, during the aforementioned trip to Israel, where in a video of the Trumps and Netanyahus walking together, Melania pushes away—there’s really no other word for what she calls “a little innocent gesture”—her husband’s hand as he offers her his. She explains that this is because there was no room for them to walk side by side on the red carpet, and she had no problem walking behind the couple and her husband. “When he offered me his hand, I declined it, indicating that I had no problem walking alone.” Perhaps the relationship between them exists outside the confines of the spatial laws to which we mere mortals are subject? Since contrary to her account, the video clearly shows her picking up her pace to walk alongside him.
If the Trumps have had any important conversations, you won’t find them in these pages, despite Melania’s apparent dedication to putting into words anything that isn’t clearly verbalized. Election night 2016? “When we finally got home on election night, it was so late and I was so exhausted that any meaningful discussion of these momentous events—or our suddenly transformed future—seemed out of reach.” When they finally find a little “private moment,” she recalls telling him, “Congratulations. What an accomplishment! All these candidates… and you won. You’re the president of the United States of America.” He replies, “And you, the first lady… Good luck.” Which Melania kindly translates for readers again as, “I know you’re going to do great. Let’s get to work.”
