by Kate Bennett
Though her smiles were less frequent than the pinned-on grins radiating from her stepchildren and their offspring that June day at Trump Tower, Melania was not necessarily *un*happy, she was just, as she often is, doing what felt natural. Mostly, Melania was just glad Trump had finally thrown his hat in the ring. “Good job,” she told her husband in his ear before they walked off the stage. “Thanks, baby,” he responded.
There’s a common misperception that Melania was against Trump’s running for president. That she didn’t want him to do it. Not true. She very much pushed him to run, in part because she did actually believe he would win and do a good job, but she was also tired, really tired, of listening to him talk about it.
The national election cycle is every four years, when newspapers and cable news channels fill with speculation and think pieces and takes on potential candidates, polls of Americans about what needs to be fixed, what they like, what they fear, what they want to have more of or less of. And so it went in the Trump household during their eighteen years together: each time an election was approaching, Melania would have to listen to her husband go on and on about what was wrong with the country; how he would do it better; how he had predicted this, this, and this would happen, and it did. When they met, Bill Clinton was just starting his second term. Melania had to hear about Clinton, then George W. Bush, and then Obama—all the while listening, nodding. Finally, she essentially said, “Okay, so if you can do it better than all three of these guys, do it already.”
Think about it this way: by the time Trump took the oath of office, it had been seventeen years since Melania had posed in a bathing suit on a rug in a fake Oval Office for a glossy magazine, dropping innuendos about what a primo first lady this babe would be. In some ways, the leap from men’s mag hottie to White House occurred in the blink of an eye—but for Melania, it was an epic journey. How many times could she be asked what she thought about her husband running for president? In 2000, he toyed with the Reform Party and running on a ticket with former wrestling performer turned governor Jesse Ventura or with Oprah Winfrey. In 2004 he was considering a run “very seriously,” he told the press; in 2008 he dropped hints that he would run as an Independent. In 2010 it was The Apprentice that prevented him from going forward with pursuing the Republican nomination. “Ultimately, it’s hard to give up a top-rated television show,” he said. Each time, Melania also had to answer what she might like about living in the White House. “In 1999, when they asked what kind of first lady I would be, it was out there that I’d be traditional, a Jackie Kennedy or Betty Ford. But that was 1999. A lot has changed.”
By the time talk of 2016 was in full swing, Melania was more inclined to say “put up or shut up” than to talk him out of it or, as some have suggested, to beg him not to. “He was always thinking about it,” she said.
It was now—finally—time. He was getting older, she told friends; when he started thinking earnestly about a presidential career, he’d just hit his fifties; now he was seventy.
She had lost patience with his waffling. It was fish-or-cut-bait time, and she was pushing him to finally drop his line. One close adviser says Melania’s goading had a big impact on his ultimate decision to enter the race.
Melania genuinely believed he would win, too. “If you run, you will win,” she told him, over and over. She was way ahead in foreseeing the movement that Trump could create and how the focus on the flashy part of the Donald was hiding a charisma and machismo that would draw voters. “They would prefer to joke about his hair than about what he achieved,” she said. Yet she did hold his feet to the fire and forced him to consider the seriousness of a presidential run before he embarked on it.
She needed him to know from her perspective what running for president would mean. “You really need to think about it,” she told Trump, according to two friends who know how deeply she wanted her husband to understand the consequences for their family and the life they knew of campaigning for months; of reporters picking through every aspect of his life and his family’s life, revealing his personality; of losing friends; of experiencing isolation. He had to grasp there were legitimate emotional things to ponder.
Most of those issues directly impacted her. Even if Donald Trump had wanted to be president, by many accounts being first lady was not something Melania Trump aspired to. This wasn’t her dream. Her dream was actually quite akin to what she had: a rich husband; cushy life; happy child; multiple homes; glamour when she wanted it, privacy when she didn’t; independence. Having a husband run for and ultimately win the presidency sort of felt like a gross inconvenience for Melania. Was she happy for her spouse for achieving his dream? Yes. But she greeted the rest of it with a heavy sigh.
But when he did finally announce his campaign, Melania was supportive, as she had promised she would be if he did the work of deep consideration. Still, she laid some ground rules. Most of them Trump knew were coming, simply because he was well aware of the kind of person he married. Melania wouldn’t be cajoled into campaigning or threatened into it. She wasn’t going to be prodded to attend events by overzealous staff members or Washington political consultants claiming to know best. She and she alone would choose which events she would attend and what she would say or not say. She didn’t care that first ladies were historically important players for corralling voters and that Trump was already woefully behind when it came to support from women. Her approach was, quite frankly, unsuited to a political wife; more than that, it was unheard of.
From the start of the twentieth century, first ladies, or potential first ladies, were essential to their husbands’ platforms. Immensely popular for the most part, a candidate’s spouse was the perfect opener at a hard speech about policy or the ideal closer for a speech about cultural issues; she was as good alone preaching to a local Rotary Club as she was with a gaggle of local politicians’ spouses, standing behind their men. Jackie Kennedy had a virtual cult of campaign trail wannabes who followed her to the White House, pillbox hats and minidresses growing exponentially with the rise of Jackie’s signature bouffant, chin-length hairdo. Hillary Clinton worked the campaign as part hard-charging modern woman, wife, mom, and lawyer and part fierce defender of her “man,” when he was faced with allegations of infidelity. Laura Bush, while not immensely comfortable with making speeches in front of big crowds, worked the hell out of small donor groups, showing off an approachability and likability that ultimately made her a favorite of Republican voters. Michelle Obama was so good on the trail that in 2008 she earned the nickname “The Closer.” Michelle was used to commanding an audience. As a former hospital executive with degrees from Princeton and Harvard, she was gifted with words and solid at delivering a resonating message. However, like Melania, she put limits on her campaign participation, insisting that her two daughters came first on her schedule. She also knew quite well that when she did show up for a speech, she would handily knock it out of the park. Michelle’s conversion rate was legendary; the number of voters who registered or signed up to volunteer on the Obama campaign after a Michelle speech was always high.
In terms of campaign participation, small, medium, or large, Melania didn’t really want any of it.
“You don’t manage Melania Trump in the way it’s discussed when you’re normally managing or handling a high-profile political spouse,” a political veteran who worked on the Trump campaign told me. He had initially dabbled in attempting to get Melania to play along with some political events—but quickly saw it was like talking a brick wall into being something besides a brick wall. “She rejects any efforts to be managed or told what to do.”
Melania had decided long ago, around the time Barron was born in 2006, that if her husband actually ever did run, she would still remain home and take care of their son. It wasn’t a convenient excuse. Melania didn’t like nannies living in the penthouse with them. With the exception of a night nurse when Barron was a newborn and an extra nanny for daytime when he was an older baby and toddler, she did most
everything herself, says a friend.
Melania was there to shepherd Barron to soccer and baseball practice, liked dropping him off at school, enjoyed when his friends came over to play—she had no desire to take a maternal sabbatical for the sake of her husband’s political objectives. She wasn’t about to leave her son to eat corn dogs at the Iowa State Fair. (She did eventually go to Iowa with Trump, first for a campaign event in Council Bluffs and then for the caucus in February 2016 in Des Moines. Wearing a red dress and matching red coat draped over her shoulders and her giant diamond ring, Melania sat uncomfortably in a plastic chair at the Ramada hotel next to Trump, a blank, not-overly-excited-political-spouse face, awaiting returns.)
Seasoned political watchers and campaign veterans said it was weird that Melania wasn’t on the trail, and a lot of them chalked it up to the campaign’s concern that “traditional values” Republicans in America wouldn’t take kindly to a third wife who was a former model. That wasn’t it. Inside Trump world they longed to get Melania out there, because they knew behind the diamonds and the heels and the lip gloss was a warm woman with a story to tell. A story about the American dream, about immigration, about the human side of their candidate from the woman who had a child with him.
And even if—if—they hated her, they would probably still come out just to listen to this curiosity of a woman who could somehow manage being married to a man many undecided voters considered a jackass loudmouth. Either way, the campaign would have preferred her on the trail. “We weren’t purposefully trying to hide her, no,” says the aide. She just kept a distance from the role of campaigner.
Melania for years has told people that being married to a man like Trump meant not morphing into him, absorbing his life, but doing the opposite. “She’s very independent,” says the campaign staffer, clearly catching the drift early on in the election cycle that Melania wasn’t playing when she said she wasn’t going to be active. The “independent” line was a familiar refrain with Melania, who used it both as a calling card and a prophylactic to get people to stop poking around about why she was staying out of the campaign.
She did make a few appearances on the trail, however, mostly at Trump’s debates, even once in a while taking a solo turn at a rally. Her first speaking appearance with him came in November 2015 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a full five months after his Trump Tower announcement of his candidacy. Her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, were there, too, and he called them up on stage with Melania, Barron, Ivanka, Jared, and Tiffany.
“Would you like to say hello?” Trump asks his wife in front of the screaming crowd of thousands. Her body language clearly indicates no, she does not. But she does. “Good evening. Isn’t he the best?” she says, pointing to Trump. “He will be the best president ever. We love you.” And that was that.
He did the surprise call-over move again in February 2016, also in South Carolina. She was better this time, but no less shocked by the unplanned invitation. “I said say a few words, Melania. There’s only about forty million people watching. Say a few words,” as Trump recalled the morning after he had fear-teased his wife into talking about him on the campaign trail. “She got up and she spoke beautifully.”
What she actually said was, “Congratulations to my husband; he was working very hard. And he loves you, we love you, and we are going ahead to Nevada and we’ll see what happens.” Then she handed the mic back to Trump.
“Melania, what she puts up with, oy,” was the way she was introduced by her husband a couple of weeks later in New Hampshire. He was thanking her, I think, but it came out in a way that made it sound like even her own husband felt sorry for her. “So Melania, thank you, honey, thank you,” Trump said, clasping her shoulder and shaking her a little like she was an old war buddy.
She’d been through a lot, though, sort of like a war buddy. During the second Republican primary debate in September 2015, Trump straight up didn’t mention her in his introduction, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if each of the other ten candidates on the stage hadn’t gushed over their own spouses.
“I’m Donald Trump,” he said. “I wrote The Art of the Deal. I say not in a braggadocious way, I’ve made billions and billions of dollars.”
As the campaign unfolded and Trump picked off those ten other challengers, there were attempts by Trump’s team to get Melania more involved, but they were weak and almost never succeeded. “There might have been the odd ask here or there or a ‘Hey, it would be great if,’ but there was never a hard sell,” says a Trump campaign source on how gently they handled Melania. They would sometimes ask Trump to ask his wife himself, but that was hardly ever successful, mostly because Trump doesn’t like wasting his time on something he knows isn’t going to go his way. “I think there was a recognition on his end that he knew his wife better than anyone and that he knew what she would be interested in or not interested in.”
It also mattered what worked with Barron’s schedule. If he was out of school on a break and her parents could stay with him in New York, then Melania was more likely to attend an event. Slovenian mothers are notorious for not being able to let go of their children; Melania is no exception.
She didn’t miss the Trump family interviews, though—making sure to be present for a Today show town hall in April. Ivanka, of course, talked the most of all the kids (see chapter 13), but Melania got the last question: “What’s the one habit you wish he’d give up?” “Let’s see,” she thought, looking at Trump, sitting next to her. “Retweeting,” she said, laughing in his face, demonstrating early on that she is probably the only one in his life who can do so and get away with it. He laughed too, a little.
Although Melania was not present for events on the trail, she followed the campaign with intense scrutiny from home: whether it was the polls, how Trump spoke to another candidate, or threats only she could see coming. “I’m very political in private life,” Melania said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, “and between me and my husband I know everything that is going on. I follow from A to Z.”
“She never allowed herself to fall into the political trap that most spouses do in the first place,” says a campaign source. “That trying to program all of her movements that plenty of wives tend to do. She never did that.” Because unlike most other spouses (most humans, really), Melania cares not at all what other people think about her. It’s a skill that she has honed—one that ultimately drew Trump to her and that allows her to remain married to him—and that forms a protective shell for her as first lady.
When she did fall into the “trap” or did something she wasn’t comfortable doing, it felt like it. In April, in Wisconsin, ahead of that state’s primary, Melania, looking gaunt, gave a stilted speech about Trump that was basically all declarative sentences strung together. “He’s a hard worker. He’s kind. He has a great heart. He’s tough. He’s smart. He’s a great communicator. He’s a great negotiator. He’s telling the truth. He’s a great leader. He’s fair. As you may know by now, when you attack him, he punches back ten times harder. No matter who you are, a man or a woman, he treats everyone equal. He’s a fighter.”
When she was done, Trump mouthed to her, “Wow, so good!” like she was a toddler who had just said her ABC’s for the first time. “So beautiful,” said Trump, taking the mic from her. “She said, ‘Do you mind? I wrote something.’ I said, ‘Do you want me to read it?’ and she said, ‘I don’t want you to read it.’” So she read it.
Those rare appearances were mostly orchestrated by Hope Hicks, Trump’s trusted aide. Hicks was the interface with Melania, making sure that the events Melania did want to attend went smoothly and that travel and logistics were handled for her so she wouldn’t be bothered. Kellyanne Conway also helped in that space, but it fell predominantly to Hicks to handle Melania.
Melania liked Hicks—the two women shared similar qualities. They were both jaw-droppingly pretty, stylish, quiet in public, good at keeping secrets, close to their immediate families, and favorites o
f the candidate. Melania, like Trump, also trusted Hicks’s instincts. She felt that if Hicks was asking her to participate in an event, she had already calculated Melania’s time, hours away from Barron, the need for her presence, and how her being wherever she was asked to be would affect her husband’s mood, on a scale of aloof to he needs her or he’ll lose his shit.
Of course, the campaign trail inevitably got thorny for Melania as the election neared. In July, she delivered the partially plagiarized RNC speech, and the very next day a story ran that the official GOP Web page biography about her was inaccurate. It was. It said she had obtained a degree in design and architecture from the University of Ljubljana, which she had not. She dropped out after one year to pursue modeling. The Web site came down. Actually, the spiel that she had graduated college was a thing for Melania since she’d been in New York and started dating Donald Trump, who is obsessed with education status, prone to spouting off the names of Ivy League schools his appointees attended and suggesting people with better college pedigrees were naturally smarter. The embellishment of Melania’s college career was likely influenced by Trump, in the same way it was probably he who advised her to shave a few years off her age when she landed print stories in magazines after they got together.
Less than two weeks later came the real humdinger of humiliation. The New York Post ran old nude modeling shots of Melania, a particularly shocking one on its cover, with the brutal headline: “The Ogle Office.” “You’ve never seen a potential first lady like this!” raved the cover line, next to a picture of Melania, photoshopped blue stars covering her nipples, her own hands barely hiding her private parts, naked below the waistline. Inside, there were more photos. One from the front, one from behind, Melania looking over her shoulder, in high heels, hands pressed against the wall. They were … not good.