Melania Trump finally steps out of Donald’s shadow
As first lady launches children’s initiatives, speculation still rife on her view of role
She is married to the most
powerful man in the world. She does her duty and remains silent as he
utters falsehoods, hurls insults and admits paying hush money to an
actor in adult films who alleges an extramarital affair. Little wonder
that one columnist dubbed her the Slovenian Sphinx.
This week, however, Melania Trump
is poised to step into the limelight. First her spokeswoman, Stephanie
Grisham, told National Public Radio the first lady would announce policy
initiatives focused on children, in particular dealing with social
media, health and addiction. Then the White House said the announcement
would happen on Monday in the Rose Garden, a venue usually reserved for
presidential press conferences.
For supporters it will be a
welcome, if overdue, emergence, building on her deft hosting of a state
dinner for the French president, Emmanuel Macron. For critics it will be
too little too late, a futile gesture by a woman who was dealt a bad
hand and played it badly, and whose relationship with Trump offers rich
pickings for gossips.
“The whole country right now is in a bad marriage with Donald Trump
and can’t escape his shadow, so how can she?” asks Bill Galston, a
former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, the last president to suffer
marital problems in the public gaze.
A polyglot, former model and only the second first lady born outside the United States,
Melania made a slower start than most presidential spouses. She was
largely absent from Washington during the first six months of the
administration, preferring to remain at Trump Tower, in Manhattan, so
her son, Barron, would not have to change schools. With Melania a
“nonpresence”, wrote the author Michael Wolff, White House staff
referred to Trump’s daughter Ivanka as his “real wife”.
Melania moved to the White House
in June 2017 but continued to maintain a low profile. At the start of
this year, however, she hired a young policy director, 27-year-old
Reagan Thompson, and slowly came out of her shell. There were even some
subversive gestures – for those who chose to see them.
Melania travelled to the State of
the Union address separately from Trump and wore an all-white suit, an
outfit associated with Trump’s election rival, Hillary Clinton.
She recently convened a White
House discussion on cyberbullying, an issue with ironic resonance given
her husband’s habit of bullying foes with demeaning nicknames on
Twitter. “I’m well aware that people are sceptical of me discussing this
topic,” she said.
But her defining moment, at least so far, was the first state dinner of the Trump presidency,
for which she did not hire an event planner and took charge of
arrangements herself. Melania earned rave reviews for everything from
flowers to food to fashion, wearing a black Chantilly-lace Chanel
haute-couture gown in a nod to her French guests.
Less happily, TV cameras zoomed in
on Melania resisting Trump’s fumbling attempt to hold her hand before
eventually surrendering, an awkward episode that proved catnip to
comedians.
It was not the first such incident
between the couple and contrasted with Melania’s broad smile while
socialising with former presidents and first ladies in Houston, at the
funeral of Barbara Bush.
Then, in a rambling phone interview on Fox News’s Fox & Friends,
Trump was asked what he had bought his wife for her 48th birthday.
“Maybe I didn’t get her so much,” he replied. “I got her a beautiful
card. You know I’m very busy.”
Last week it got worse. Trump
changed his story and acknowledged that he had reimbursed his
lawyer-cum-fixer, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000, or almost €110,000,
paid to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence just days before the 2016
presidential election. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford,
alleges that she had a sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf
tournament in Nevada in 2006, months after Melania had given birth to
Barron. The thrice-married Trump denies the claim.
Galston, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, says: “I don’t know how to get
inside her head, but if she’s wired the way most people are, I can’t
imagine she’s feeling warm and fuzzy toward her husband right now.”
He adds: “Whatever she signed up
for, she didn’t sign up for this. Being first lady is not the fulfilment
of a life’s dream for her. I don’t think she’s a public person. She
finds herself in a position she never expected to be in, and she now has
to decide what to make of it.”
“The standard of glamour”
The state visit by the French
president invited comparisons with Jackie Kennedy, who proved such a hit
on a visit to Paris in 1961 that President John F Kennedy told the
press: “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I
have enjoyed it.” Galston notes: “Jackie Kennedy set the standard of
glamour and visibility against which every first lady has been measured
since.”
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