Is Melania Trump really eager to get rid of President Trump as much as tens of millions of Americans? Or is it just another fantasy that Trump’s critics project on a first lady who has managed to envelop her true personality in mystery?
Many who despise Donald Trump imagine his wife too. They point to a few videos of her appearing to refuse to hold her husband’s hand as evidence. They also notice that Melania spends a lot of time apart from her husband and that she is not as affectionate publicly with him as, for example, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama or Jill Biden with their husbands. Some have baselessly claimed that Melania has a double body that replaces her when (they imagine) she refuses to make appearances at from her husband’s side.
“Never, not with a previous first lady,” has there been a creepy conspiracy theory like this, said Myra Gutin, professor of communications at Rider University of New Jersey and author of “The President’s Partner”. : The First Lady in the Twentieth Century. “
It’s easy to see where this idea came from. After a brutal election, many anti-Trumpers who are fed up with the president calling others “losers” would not hesitate to see him humiliated by his 24-year-old leaving him, especially when he’s already down.
Melania Trump keeps a small inner circle, but two people close to her spoke to the Washington Post and said she has shown no signs of leaving her husband, at least not anytime soon. (They spoke on condition of anonymity as they know Melania wouldn’t want them talking to the press. “She thinks her privacy is nobody’s business,” one said. .)
The first lady has said on several occasions over the past four years that she doesn’t always agree with the president, but in the final days of the 2020 campaign, she has emerged as one of his pom- most ardent cheerleaders. In forceful and highly partisan speeches, she criticized Biden, the Democrats and the media, while urging people to vote for her husband, the only true leader and “optimist” in the race.
“I don’t think Melania is leaving Donald. She is very willingly complicit in his schemes and considers her beliefs as her own, ”said Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer who is housebound as he completes a federal conviction for tax evasion and funding violations. countryside. “These two deserve.”
The assets are remarkably in sync despite their differences in personalities, said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and aide who wrote a book which was very critical of the first lady. “It’s part of the show. She has always been calm. He was the loud one. She was the sweet one. He was the hardest part. They play against each other. It’s part of the relationship that makes it work. “
Asked that people were speculating on the possibility of the Trumps breaking up, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, berated sternly: “This question is pathetic and exactly why people no longer trust the mainstream media. . No legitimate journalist would ask for that.
The idea that Melania can’t wait to abandon Donald could be a natural extension of the same wishful thinking that has led people to assume that the President’s reckless disregard for the truth and standards of presidential behavior would lead to enormous repudiation in the ballot boxes. And although Trump lost his re-election, that karmic wave never materialized.
Maybe Melania looks like America: a large part of herself admires Donald Trump, even though another part of her is appalled by him.
SNL writer Julio Torres, the mastermind behind this and other Melania sketches, said he stopped wanting to write them after the first lady wore her infamous “I REALLY DON’T CARE YOU, YOU? jacket on a trip to visit children of immigrants detained at the US-Mexico border – a message she said was meant to delve into her media critics, but struck many as deaf given her husband’s ruthless approach to families at the border.
“There has been this change. It wasn’t funny anymore, ”Torres said in a 2019 interview. At first, Torres and his colleagues had felt somewhat sorry for Melania Trump. “We were like, ‘Oh, that poor lady. The American dream has gone wrong, ”he said. “And then she started talking and it was like, ‘Oh, you’re not captive. You make choices. There is an agency. You are an accomplice. She is no longer the princess of the castle. “
It has been a trying year for a First Lady who values her privacy. At the end of the summer, Winston Wolkoff, the former friend and assistant, released secret audio recordings in which Melania is heard expressing her opinions in an unsupervised manner.
On the tapes, Melania could be heard using strong language referring to her decorating duties in the White House (“Who cares about Christmas stuff and decorations?”), And saying that she was thrilled to “Drive the liberals crazy”. She also seemed ruthless when she spoke of children at the border who had been separated from their parents. You could hear him say that these children had a bed in detention, and the United States took better care of them than Mexico. The release of these tapes, along with other critics, contributed to a White House bunker mentality, with both Trumps feeling under siege. Some of those who work in the White House attribute this solidarity to why they appeared closer in 2020 than in 2016.
As her husband’s re-election effort entered the country, she became more vocal in supporting the administration and its talking points.
In all, she gave four long speeches on a whirlwind tour of the battlefield states, more than her campaign activities of 2016. In Huntersville, NC, she called Biden a “career politician” who is widely recognized. couldn’t take the word: “You deserve a president with proven results, not a career politician with empty words and broken promises.” In a barn in West Bend, Wisconsin, she criticized Biden as a “socialist,” attacked the press as “propaganda” and denounced the “fictitious indictment.” It was strong, especially for a first lady who rarely gives interviews and has often reported that she has more measured political views than her husband.
“Joe Biden says he could do a better job leading our great nation,” she said as the crowd of 250 masked and wearing MAGA hats roared their approval. “Apparently when you are hiding in a basement you feel safe to communicate your wishful thinking.”
On election day, with the DC area president, the first lady walked to her polling station in Palm Beach, Florida – without her husband, breaking tradition – and voted.
Following of Biden’s victory, President Trump desperately clung to the idea that the courts might somehow overturn the results. Melania has made a public appearance since Election Day, appearing with the President at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day (and raising her eyebrows as she walked not with her husband, but arm in arm with a Marine and, again, without mask). She recently tweeted according to his official government account @FLOTUS: “Every legal vote – not illegal – must be counted.” She has yet to reach out to Jill Biden to offer her congratulations – unlike Michelle Obama, who had invited Melania Trump to the White House for tea at that time. four years ago, despite the bad blood between the families.
“As far as I know, the president hasn’t conceded the race yet, so that seems fair,” said Michael LaRosa, spokesperson for Jill Biden, who is nonetheless build your transition team.
Grisham, Melania Trump’s chief of staff, has hinted that the election results are not yet final. She said the first lady felt that “we need to protect our democracy with transparency, and that is the current goal. “
Many expect Trump to be the first incumbent president to skip the nomination since Andrew Johnson did so 150 years ago, which means Melania Trump probably won’t be there either.
“Unfortunately,” Brower said, “we have descended into such partisanship that Trump has made impossible the kind of civility that we are used to during a period of transition.”
After the departure of trumps at the White House, Melania is expected to spend more time in Palm Beach, Florida than in New York City, which erupted with joy and dancing in the streets at the news of Biden’s victory.
President Trump, who during the campaign called New York a lawless “ghost town”, moved his official residence to Florida last year. Ultimately, Melania Trump will be settling near where Barron decides to go to high school, her friends have said. Some have suggested that he might like to go to a boarding school abroad.
Last week Dave Mason, an odds maker at BetOnline.ag, a popular offshore betting company, said most players making a bet on Trump marriage were putting their money on a divorce. In fact, so many people bet on divorce that the potential payout has gone down. This week, a $ 10 bet on “Yes, she’s going to divorce” before November 3, 2021 would pay $ 26 if that happens – instead of $ 65 on polling day.
“A lot of people want her to leave him as some sort of reward, but I don’t see Melania Trump as that type of person,” said Elizabeth J. Natalle, associate professor of communications at the University of the North. Carolina in Greensboro, who has written books on Jacqueline Kennedy and Michelle Obama.
“She always said in her interviews that she was a big girl,“ Natalle said. “She knows what she’s doing.
