by Doug Wead
Rachel’s girlfriends were under strict orders to keep her away from any old publications laying around. But the old newspapers were stacked up in all the dress shops of Nashville, and Rachel was soon devouring every line of the salacious stories that had been hidden from her during the campaign.
Deeply religious, even saintly, Rachel Jackson was mortified. She went into a deep depression, stayed in bed, and eventually died before the inauguration. She was America’s first lady, but she never set foot in the White House and she never wore the beautiful dress she had purchased that day in Nashville with her girlfriends.
At this, President Trump looked thoughtful and didn’t say a word.
MELANIA AND DONALD, A LOVE AFFAIR
Donald and Melania Trump were married January 22, 2005, in Palm Beach, Florida, at the church Bethesda-by-the-Sea. Bill and Hillary Clinton were among the stellar list of celebrity guests. Billy Joel sang to the couple. Wedding guests would have been forgiven if they had whispered to their partners, “Just remember, when you shake Hillary Clinton’s hand, you will be shaking the hand of the first woman president in American history.” Donald and Melania spent their honeymoon at the Mar-a-Lago resort. Barron, their baby son, was born a year later.
Sources told me that in almost any conversation with the president, he will mention his wife, Melania. That happened at our luncheon. I was surprised by this. Perhaps I had been unwittingly influenced by the critical media narrative of everything Trump, including the interpretation of their marriage. The image of the first lady that came from my own interactions with the president showed a woman very much invested in the legacy of her husband and his administration. This was a close couple who faced the unprecedented outside hostility together. The first lady was very much in the game, which, of course, made sense. How could the success of any of the other members of the Trump family, including Melania, survive the one? The president himself? For good or bad, they were linked.
This is not to contradict the idea of her fiercely contested independence. “I have my own voice and my opinions,” she says, “and it’s very important to me that I express how I feel.”17
She has been known to speak up and sometimes in political matters. “I don’t always agree with what he tweets, and I tell him that,” she said.18
Before the famous announcement for president in 2015, Lara Trump remembers a big discussion at the Trump family compound in Bedminster, New Jersey. “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard how the first lady has always told him he would win. That’s so true. There was never a doubt from her. She believed in him. From day one, she always believed in him.’19
“We had dinner on the president’s birthday two days before he announced he was running for president,” Lara Trump told me. “And we all talked about it as a family. He said, ‘You know, this is something that’s going to happen. If anybody has any thoughts on it, let’s talk about it now. They’re going to come after us.’
“Of course, we didn’t know how bad it was going to be. But I remember that night, he turned to Melania, and he said, ‘Honey, what do you think?’
“She goes, ‘If you’re going to run, you’re going to win.’ It was just like that. Matter of fact. And she was always consistent about it, even with all of the ups and downs on election night.”
Lara described the drama at Trump Tower. “You remember me describing how we were all gathered around televisions on the fourteenth floor and then we moved up to the private apartment. And finally into the kitchen. Here was this big crowd of people gathered around watching all the final results from Michigan and Pennsylvania, coming in on this tiny TV. And even before they called the election Melania had officially declared it to the family. ‘I told you. I told you.’ She was right and she had known it from day one.”
Journalists often try to look for a wedge between the first couple. The president was known for calling out, “Where’s my supermodel?” Was this demeaning? Melania was once asked.
She only smiled. “It’s his sense of humor.”20
Other members of the Trump family insisted that the two, the president and the first lady, were often playful in their repartee. For example, while outwardly, officially, the various Trump family members would talk about what a privilege it was to serve their country, and you could ask them how they were holding up to the scurrilous public attacks and they would all answer back graciously, the fact was that privately, it was a nightmare, and they all knew it. No first family in recent memory had gone through what they were going through. It was much worse than Donald Trump’s original warnings back at the family meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The president would occasionally ease the tension by teasing the first lady, saying, sarcastically, with puffed up importance, “Melania, honey, look at this incredible journey I have brought you on.”
“It’s like a joke between them at every dinner,” Lara says. “Everyone is attacking all of us and she’s smeared for no reason other than pure jealousy and he says, ‘Hon, isn’t this amazing? This journey that I have allowed you to come on?’
“And she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, thank you so much.’
“It’s hilarious. I love it.”
THE TRIP TO AFRICA
In 2018 First Lady Melania Trump visited Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, and Egypt. It was her first major solo foreign trip, and it was a rousing success. She said that she wanted “to show the world that we care.”21
It worked.
“Mrs. Trump has always envisioned her first international trip would be Africa,” said Stephanie Grisham, her press secretary. “So, we’ve known we would be doing this since the very beginning.”22
The trip focused on humanitarian issues, including healthcare, conservation, and education. There was also an emphasis on tourism, a major source of hard currency for many economically challenged countries of Africa.
In Ghana, Mrs. Trump toured the Cape Coast Castle, where slaves were held before their transport to North America by the British. She was deeply moved. “This is a very special place,” she said. “I will never forget the incredible experience and the stories that I heard.”23
When Mrs. Trump visited the pyramids outside Cairo, journalists and photographers had a field day, taking hundreds of pictures and describing every piece of her clothing for fashion websites. During a rare press conference, Mrs. Trump was continually asked questions about her wardrobe, “You know what?” she said. “We just completed an amazing trip. We went to Ghana. We went to Malawi. We went to Kenya. Now here we are in Egypt. I want to talk about my trip and not what I wear.”24
Still, the president was pleased by the favorable international press. “The first lady did a tremendous job representing our country in Africa—like no one has before,” Trump said. “She got to know firsthand the people of Africa, and they loved and respected her everywhere she went. Melania told me about her trip in great detail, and I’m so proud of the job she’s doing on behalf of children everywhere. She works so hard, and does it all out of love.”25
Melania’s compassion has led to projects far beyond her antibullying campaign and unexpectantly touched the lives of private and public figures. Such is the story of Eric Bolling.
Bolling, the former host of the hit Fox News show The Five, was headed home on a beautiful Friday night. He and his wife, Adrienne, had just enjoyed a nice dinner together. It was approximately ten thirty. His cell phone rang.
“As a parent your stomach drops,” he remembers. He was expecting a call from his son. “The girl on the other line was crying. I don’t know why I immediately went there but I said, ‘Kayla’—it was a girl he was dating at the University of Colorado—‘is he still alive?’ And through her tears she said, ‘No.’”26
Adrienne had heard that word—“No”—from the cell phone. She immediately pulled their car over to the side of the road and let the speeding traffic pass by. Their son had purchased what he thought was a real Xanax tablet on campus. They would later learn that it was “a Chinese knockoff laced
with the deadly fentanyl drug.”27
Donald Trump called him the next day. “Eric, Melania, and I are so sorry. We will do what we can to help.” Bolling and his wife were in shock.
The Thanksgiving holiday came two weeks later. “We were headed to the Thanksgiving dinner table,” Eric remembers. “That empty seat was looming ominously. I swear to you, the phone rang as we were approaching the table. It was President Trump and the first lady calling to send their love and support, knowing that the holidays were going to be rough. They were right.”
Eric Bolling launched a fifteen-city tour to talk about the dangers of opioid drugs. First Lady Melania Trump joined the tour and soon became the preeminent spokesperson. People waited for hours to see her and tell her their own tragic stories, which often ended in weeping.
The first lady determined to be proactive and make the cause preventative. She told audiences how she had shared the dangers of the crisis with her son Barron and urged other mothers and fathers to “have the talk” before it was too late. Texts and testimonials came in with countless stories of brokenhearted parents, and many of them thanked her for speaking so freely about the issue.
On May 7, 2019, Eric Bolling stood in the Rose Garden of the White House and spoke to Melania Trump. “First Lady, you’ve raised awareness about a deadly killer. You’ve helped lift the stigma, which will save countless of lives going forward. Best of all, you’re saving our children, our babies, as young as ten, eleven, and twelve years old. We are losing thousands of them. We love them. America thanks you, First Lady.
“When the history books are written,” Bolling said, “there should be a special chapter reserved for our first lady. Many first ladies have focused on making our lives better, and they have. But you, First Lady Melania Trump, have gone one step further and saved lives.”28
In Melania Trump we may be witnessing the unfolding story of one of America’s greatest first ladies. She has carved out a unique role as a champion for children, an advocate for victims of the opioid crisis, and the president’s quiet diplomat. She moves graciously and silently from one hospital bed to the next, like an American version of Lady Diana, but she does so unheralded and unseen. Her “Be Best” anticyberbullying campaign has gone viral. Bolling calls her “The most important and accomplished first lady in American history.”29
GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
One of Melania Trump’s greatest gifts to the nation has been her gracious response to the media and the political vitriol directed at her. One could argue that the more outrageous and unfair the criticism, the more remarkable and impressive has been her elegant response. She holds her head up high and soldiers on. Her poise and her kindly confidence infuriate Donald Trump’s opponents.
Late-night comedians mock her accent. April Ryan of CNN shamelessly declared that Melania was “not culturally American.”30 MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace suggested that both first lady Melania and first daughter Ivanka had to be “paid off.” “Are they just the most stoic human beings, are they numb, are they dead inside, are they paid off, I mean, what’s their deal?” Wallace asked.31
CNN reporter Brian Stelter saw sinister issues behind the fact that the first lady was not in the public eye for several days at one point.32 In truth, she was recovering after a five-day hospital stay for treatment for a kidney condition.
The television personality Joy Behar said that before coming to America, the first lady “was in Slovenia doing nothing.”33
Sometimes the mean-spirited snub of Melania Trump bordered on schoolgirl immaturity. At a 2017 event, Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, ignored repeated questions about the beautiful and fashionable American first lady, Melania Trump, and insisted peevishly that Michelle Obama “was the best ambassador this country could possibly have in many ways, obviously, way beyond fashion.”34
Melania had been impressed with Mrs. Obama. After their first meeting, President Donald Trump had tweeted, “Melania liked Mrs. O a lot!”35 Months later, when the Trumps showed up at the White House for Inauguration Day, Melania had brought Mrs. Obama a present wrapped in a Tiffany blue box. Mrs. Obama held her fire, refusing to criticize Mrs. Trump but not hesitating to attack her husband.
On June 17, 2018, former first lady Laura Bush wrote an op-ed condemning the separation of children from parents who had been arrested illegally entering the United States. She called the policy cruel and immoral, and said that “it breaks my heart.”36 The national media went crazy with approbation. The Trumps were pilloried. Lost in the circus was the fact that Mrs. Trump had also argued against the policy, that the president himself was trying to get Congress to change the law, and the fact that such a policy applied to all violations of the law, including those that occurred to people arrested under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Laura’s husband. In fact, the majority of the photos and videos that the national media were using to illustrate their stories came from the Obama era.
What also went unmentioned by the media and the former first lady was the fact that her husband, President George W. Bush, had invaded Iraq on what some historians see as false pretenses, claiming that there were weapons of mass destruction, and in the process killed 110,600 people in Iraq alone, including an estimated 20,000 children.37
Months after the former first lady’s attack on the Trumps, the Bush family gathered in Washington for the funeral of former president George H. W. Bush. The Trumps, including the first lady, opened their hearts and the White House to the visiting former first family. The Bushes, their children, grandchildren, and siblings were all hosted in Blair House like heads of state.38
“I gave the order,” Donald Trump told me. Trump knew that I had once worked for George H. W. Bush and had coauthored a book with him. “I wanted to make sure that the Bush funeral had every possible courtesy extended,” he said. “The use of the planes, for example, to make the funeral a worthy state event, a truly memorable one for history.”39
George W. Bush once confided to me how hurt he and his siblings had been by the fact that the Reagans had shut them out of the private quarters of the White House when their father was serving as vice president.40 But Melania Trump, who had only months before seen her husband strongly criticized by the former first lady, offered every kindness to the Bushes and their children. Melania gave the whole Bush family the tour that the Reagans had not and allowed them the pleasure of revisiting all of the old rooms and places that had once been their home, sharing their memories with grandchildren, cousins, and other extended members of the family who had heard the stories but never seen many of the private rooms of the White House.
When Melania Trump was asked by a journalist why she had taken up the cause of cyberbullying and created her “Be Best” campaign, she smiled thoughtfully and said, “I am the most bullied person in the world.”41 In response to the false and acerbic media stories that assail her daily, she holds her head high and continues to reach out to the suffering.
Meanwhile, to the exasperation of her husband’s critics, she remains his most loyal counselor. Remember that Christmas 2018, the one described in the introduction to this book? When Donald Trump told his family that he wouldn’t be coming to Mar-a-Lago, that he would remain alone in the White House? And at the last minute, Melania raced back to the White House to be with him? On Christmas night they would travel to Iraq to visit the troops.
She would not let him go into a combat zone without her. All the insistent and authoritative lectures that the Secret Service could give could not dissuade her. Very few first ladies had ever done this before. It was a short visit, anyway. It was not necessary. The media would not care or give her any credit for the trip. It was immensely dangerous. None of that mattered. If he was in danger, she would share that danger with him. She would not let him go alone.
Many said that she had not wanted this life, they had enjoyed a good life before. She had implored him, “Why do you want to do this?” But Donald Trump had chosen to run for president. She had known all along that
he would win. They were partners, lovers. She would do her duty and see it all through to the end. Honorably and loyally.
History will soon forget the bitter, angry voices of Melania’s critics. Unfortunately for those antagonists, the stories, the photographs, and the video record of this remarkable first lady will survive and be witnesses against their pettiness and jealousy. Future generations will be able to see for themselves this elegant woman who glides softly through the angry storm of critics who try to hurt her and her son. There will be the future equivalent of entire bookshelves full of stories about this enigmatic and mysterious first lady. The envious and spiteful critics who snap at her and who are tormented by her power and poise will be long forgotten. History will provide Melania’s revenge.
NOTES
1. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/melania-trump-haters-attacked-first-lady-throughout-2018-from-mocking-accent-to-slamming-christmas-decor
2. https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-many-languages-does-melania-trump-speak.html/
3. Descriptions of Slovenia come from interviews conducted by the author during multiple travels to the country. For purposes of this book, the author recently followed up with Skype calls and emails to sources. My translator was Olga Kovalova.
4. https://abc7.com/he-would-be-a-great-leader-melania-trump-said-of-then-boyfriend-in-1999-interview/4472103/
5. This came out of a discussion with two White House sources who wished to remain anonymous. In general, sources were very respectful of the first lady and reluctant to provide the author with information about her.
6. http://elanguageworld.com/perks-of-being-multilingual/
7. https://abc7.com/he-would-be-a-great-leader-melania-trump-said-of-then-boyfriend-in-1999-interview/4472103/
8. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/politics/melania-trump-cyberbulling/index.html