The first lady never wanted to be one, and both former friends and biographers claim that she made her stay in the White House conditional on renegotiating her prenuptial agreement in the face of a hypothetical divorce.
One of the possible consequences of Donald Trump's electoral defeat could be Melania's divorce. Omarosa Manigault, former advisor to the president and who has known the couple for 15 years, said that Melania was "counting the minutes" for the divorce. Sources familiar with what is happening in the White House have informed CNN that the first lady has told her husband that it is time to admit defeat. And practically all the books that have documented the couple's time in the White House agree on the same point: Melania did not want to be there, and she does not want to be in Washington for one more minute than necessary.
Journalist Michael Wolff was the first to reveal that, on election night in 2016, when Donald Trump's victory was announced, his wife cried, "and they were not tears of joy." He was not the only one to say that the campaign had taken its toll on Melania, who refused to move to Washington for five months. Trump had promised her (and many others) that he was not going to win the election, that the goal was not to win, but to become "the most famous man in the world." He made confessions to many of his advisers and confidants of those years, such as Anthony Scaramucci, who was director of communications for the White House, who revealed that the plan for the day after the election was to go to Scotland to play golf. Not to the White House.
That victory cost her dearly in one aspect: Melania's stay in New York, refusing to act as first lady, was due to the renegotiation of her prenuptial agreement. A negotiation in which the conditions would be established for the president to have a first lady, and for her to agree to abandon her dissipated New York life. Especially regarding Barron, their son, with whom Melania was pregnant when she married Donald. This is what Mary Jordan, a journalist from the Washington Post, defends in The art of her deal, her biography of Melania. Where it was already intuited what would happen when they left the White House. Among other things, Melania asked in writing for guarantees that Barron would not become another Tiffany Trump, the daughter abandoned to her fate from Trump's second marriage. And that neither Donald Jr. nor Eric nor Ivanka, the siblings who benefit from the fund where most of the apparent Trump fortune resides, could limit Barron's inheritance.
A renegotiation that gives credence to the idea of a divorce after the couple leaves the White House, whether now or in 2024. Furthermore, in 2018 Melania bought a one-bedroom apartment in her name in Trump Tower. Her usual residence, until the 2016 elections, was the giant penthouse of the skyscraper, which has belonged to Donald for two marriages, and which could survive a third divorce.
A purchase made more or less when she broke her friendship with Stephanie Wolkoff, friend and confidante for 15 years of the first lady, who in an interview on the BBC (and in her book Melania and I) also defends the idea of divorce after "a commercial marriage", as she defends the relationship between Donald and Melania. In which the first lady has never had any political interest: Melania has only participated in one campaign event in 2020 (two, if we count the seconds in which she went on stage at the end of the last debate) and at no time has she encouraged people on her networks to vote for her husband. Although the divorce seems to be the least of the issues right now, the current priority, according to the American media, is to convince Trump to admit that he has lost. The first necessary step for Melania to get her life back on track.
