Free, Melania

by Kate Bennett

  Fast-forward to when Melania is first lady and Karen second lady traveling together to Corpus Christi, Texas, several months after Hurricane Harvey to thank first responders and check in on families. I was on that trip as a member of the press pool and remember quite clearly sitting in the back section of the plane, a C-32 military jet that’s the size of a Boeing 757, and watching someone who looked a lot like Karen Pence move from the section ahead of ours, typically where aides and advance teams sit, and head toward the back lavatory.

  The plane is divided into a handful of sections, Melania’s large cabin being first in front, with paneled walls; a private bathroom; a writing table and chairs; a blanket embossed FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES draped over the comfy sofa. The next section is typically for VIP staff (often, Melania’s chief of staff and communications director, her operations manager for the trip, and any other cabinet members or senior staff traveling), and then another section or two designated for other staff, depending on the trip. Melania’s photographer and videographer, who go with her everywhere, as is the norm, typically sit in the same section. Her photographer, a friendly woman named Andrea Hanks whose background is in fashion photography, not straight news, is a consistent presence in Melania’s world and thus in my world and that of fellow reporters. She moves where we do, but she has better access to the first lady, because it is her job to take the official White House photographs of everything Melania does. Always with Hanks is Alexander Anderson, the first lady’s official videographer. Like Hanks, it’s his job to document Melania’s movements, but with an eye to film, because it is he who crafts the short videos of thirty seconds to one minute that are posted to her social media feeds and on the White House Web site.

  Also on such flights are the chief military aide, who is responsible for logistics and overseeing the military accompaniments for the trip, which are military aircraft that accompany the first lady’s plane; the higher-ranking Secret Service detail; and, in the back section, the press. All of the sections are comfortable, the seats are typically the larger leather ones you see in first class on domestic commercial planes, and the food they serve is very good and nothing like commercial plane food at all—there are lunch bags packed for us on each seat, and longer flights include dinners and snacks, all prepared by the military cabin crew. Sometimes the menu reflects where we’re headed: taco salad for a jaunt to Texas, Tennessee hot chicken when we went to Nashville on a hospital visit. The plastic drink cups, which I’m not too proud to admit many of us in the press have taken with us off the plane as souvenirs, are labeled with the presidential seal and say FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES.

  But the main cabin where Melania stays during flights is truly spacious and luxe. So it would be weird if Karen Pence, the second lady of the United States, wasn’t seated up front either with Melania in her cabin or as close to it as possible. But she wasn’t. I watched as she walked back from the washroom to her seat, just a few rows up in the next section, and sat beside her chief of staff. I thought it strange and also telling of their relationship that Melania perhaps wouldn’t have offered to share her private cabin. Or, if she had, that Karen wouldn’t have accepted. I mean, even if you don’t like the person, it would seem the right thing to do for a flight from D.C. to Houston that takes three and a half hours—share the most comfortable space. Michelle Obama and Jill Biden would frequently huddle together on flights, discussing strategy for the public appearance they were about to make or analyzing the success of one they had just made and laughing or chatting with staff.

  My suspicions that the two weren’t close were confirmed, at least somewhat, I thought, when I noticed upon landing that Melania had not changed out of her tall boots with the four-inch heels, which she had worn getting on the plane.

  In an earlier debacle, Melania—gasp—wore her signature So Kate Christian Louboutin heels departing Washington to survey hurricane damage in Texas, and people just about had a heart attack. HOW DARE SHE?! As she usually does, she had changed on the plane from the heels into a more appropriate outfit for that occasion, putting on Adidas Stan Smith sneakers and throwing her hair into a ponytail tucked under a baseball cap emblazoned with the letters FLOTUS. After that, Melania was more mindful of her footwear at all moments of her travel.

  Yet this time, on the trip with Karen Pence, Melania didn’t change into a lower heel before she departed the plane, and the whole day she almost comically towered over Karen, who wore flats. Slipping into a flatter-heeled shoe wasn’t a consideration Melania offered Karen to help offset the height disparity. When the two posed for photos with first responders, the top of Karen’s head didn’t even reach Melania’s shoulder. I would say that Melania didn’t mean for the difference to be so great, but I’ve seen her change shoes to a lower heel or a flat, aware of the company with whom she will be walking or photographed.

  The same thing happened again when the two took a trip together in April 2019 to visit military families at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On the plane, Karen sat with the staff hoi polloi, Melania ensconced in her private cabin. On the ground, Melania wore a tailored military-style jacket with a wide belt, slim slacks, and four-inch heels. Karen wore an untucked, nondescript olive green shirt, loose green pants, and sensible loafers.

  However, Karen has had something of a makeover in recent months, whether spurred by having to stand so often next to Melania Trump, we’ll never know for sure. But she has lost weight, thanks to a commitment to the Weight Watchers program, say those who interact with her, and she’s apparently also discovered the joys—and fashion options—of Rent the Runway, a rental company for designer clothing.

  But back in Pennsylvania, right before the election, Karen opened her brief remarks by rattling off her exhaustive campaign schedule: where she had just flown in from (Iowa) and been stumping the day before (Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado). Melania had just popped over from New York City.

  Karen called Melania up to the podium, describing her as “strong” and “amazing” (which she probably actually thinks she is, having to be married to Trump—of whom, it’s reported, Karen is not a fan). Melania walked out and draped her arm around Karen’s shoulder for about five seconds as they stood together, waving while “Age of Aquarius” played on a loudspeaker—truly the weirdest walkout song, especially since no explanation for why it was chosen or who had selected it was given.

  Melania’s speech was solid: a rare admission of her feelings about her immigrant status and how, as a young woman, she longed to come to America. Political watchers both in and outside the Trump inner circle smacked their foreheads and commented that Melania should have been doing this all along, been the voice of the American dream, or some überversion of it. Maybe the campaign should have pressured her with intensity to do more appearances, tried harder. While Ivanka had been a potent surrogate, her “story”—Park Avenue princess with an Ivy League education—left something to be desired when trying to reach voters who had faced more of a struggle in life. That’s not to say that Melania was perfect—she was nervous, shaky almost, and she stumbled over the words several times. In thanking Karen, she pronounced Indiana, “Indy-AHN-a,” and said how happy she was to be in “Penn-sil-vay-knee-ah,” pronouncing every syllable. She again used her outfit to message, wearing a soft, flowing baby-pink top with loose sleeves and a simple white pencil skirt. She was talking to women, so playing the sexy vamp wasn’t the way she wanted to go.

  Melania relied on the teleprompter, but it didn’t help calm her nerves. Her sentences were stiff. But the crowd loved her. Kellyanne Conway had helped with the speech, smartly interjecting lines that would soothe Melania as she spoke, parts about Slovenia (“I grew up in a small town in Slovenia, near a beautiful river and forests”) and her family (“My parents were wonderful. Of course, we always knew about the incredible place called America.”). Conway even had the smarts to inject Ronald Reagan into the speech. “President Ronald Reagan’s ‘morning in America’ was not just something in the United
States, it began to feel like morning around the world, even in my small country. It was a true inspiration to me,” said Melania. “In 2006, I studied for the test, and become a U.S. citizen.… I’m an immigrant. And let me tell you, no one values the freedom and opportunity of America more than me,” she shared, calling herself an “independent woman.”

  She transitioned into what she wanted to focus on if she became first lady: helping kids. “Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough,” she said, chiding the bullying of kids and remarking that it’s especially troubling when bullies are “hiding” on the Internet. Her statement echoed comments she made to Anderson Cooper during the post–Access Hollywood Trump Tower interview: she wanted to help children navigate social media. These comments were the first indication that she was going to shine a light on—and try to stop—the very thing that had given her husband a political bully pulpit: name-calling on Twitter. At the time of her announcement in Pennsylvania, her platform didn’t get as much play as it eventually would, once the hypocrisy sank in.

  She also said she would help women (something she dropped once on the job). Either way, the speech was long—about sixteen minutes—and impactful. Trump won Pennsylvania by the narrowest margin in that state since 1840. Pundits and experts on elections had anticipated it would swing in Hillary Clinton’s favor—in the end Trump edged Clinton 48.18 percent to 47.46 percent. And while Melania’s speech might not have been the deciding factor that put him over the edge, it certainly didn’t hurt.

  One senior campaign aide agrees that Melania would have been a huge asset on the stump, if only she had lifted the tiniest of fingers and done more, given more speeches like the one in Berwyn. She might have had “trophy wife” written all over her, sure, but she also had a compelling and effective story, and for women she might have been a more appealing presidential spouse than Bill Clinton, around whom the affair-with-an-intern odor still lingered. “She has her own set of beliefs and she was her own person,” says a former campaign adviser, shrugging when asked why they couldn’t get her out there more. “And she’s still been more successful in being able to maintain that unique identity than any other wife of an elected official in my lifetime.”

  It is the norm that a political wife loses herself in the persona of her husband. She’s window dressing, there to reinforce his messaging and make it approachable, often to the female demographic. Political wives also tend to be so carefully molded and intellectually influenced by the politician’s staff and advisers that they become indistinguishable from the stump-made version of themselves. They have done so many potluck dinners and meet and greets with the local Junior League that they don’t know whether the speech they gave on Tuesday is the same one they gave on Saturday. A rinse-repeat behavior develops, which is frankly understandable, because the campaign trail can be brutal, but it’s a symptom of losing who you are in order to become who the campaign wants you to be. Melania, by refusing to be anyone’s shill, maintained, and still maintains, her authenticity.

  By Election Day, Melania was just ready to get it all over with. She, like the rest of Trump’s team, and possibly even Trump himself, wasn’t 100 percent sure he had put the Access Hollywood scandal far enough behind him to win. She arrived at Public School 59, her voting precinct near 57th Street and Third Avenue, wearing a white Michael Kors dress she bought at the designer’s Madison Avenue store and a camel Balmain coat with gold buttons she bought off Net-a-Porter. She had the coat “on” in her signature way, draped over her shoulders, arms not through the sleeves. With Trump next to her, she stepped into a voting booth and cast her ballot. Ivanka had gone first, not surprisingly, bringing her oldest child, Arabella, with her and Jared to watch the process. Bringing one or more of her children to public photo opportunities would soon become one of Ivanka’s more cloying calling cards—exposing her kids to the scrutiny of paparazzi cameras. Perhaps she did so because it was what she knew herself, growing up the child of Donald and Ivana Trump.

  Melania didn’t want to bring Barron, feeling like the photographers and cameras at the polling place would be too much. She was savoring every last minute of privacy for the boy, just in case Trump would go on to win the election, since all of that could be lost.

  Melania looked down at her ballot the whole time, ignoring everyone, pinning on a smile for half a second. Trump, per usual, couldn’t focus. He peered over his ballot station to his wife at hers, like he was cheating off her paper for a test. Memes followed. “See the problem with @realDonaldTrump copying Melania’s ballot is that Melania copied hers from Michelle Obama,” was one particularly viral tweet.

  By the evening, the family had gathered to watch the returns come in at Trump Tower. Melania hadn’t spent the day making last-minute calls to supporters and doing radio interviews to push every last voter to the polls, like the rest of the family had. Instead, she hung out with her parents and her son in the triplex, savoring the end of this long and difficult road. Michael Wolff, in his book Fire and Fury, said Melania had hoped Trump would lose the election so she could return to “inconspicuously lunching.” To the contrary, I’ve now covered Melania for three years and have never found anyone who could confirm that Melania actually hoped Trump would lose, much less vocalize it. She was really the only one who knew in her gut from the beginning that if Trump ran, he would win. Was she comfortable reconciling her prediction with reality? Perhaps not, but she wasn’t actively championing a loss.

  A loss wasn’t to be. As the night went on, the group gathered in election headquarters—which was also in Trump Tower, just on a different floor—and it became clear that Trump was going to win. When it was final, it was late, cruising past 1:00 A.M., and Melania, exhausted and emotionally spent, had to convince Barron, just at the cusp of the moody tween years, to get dressed and celebrate—at 2:30 A.M. Just before the family piled into SUVs to take them to the Hilton, where Trump would officially claim victory, he called Barron over and retied his shiny white necktie.

  Melania had changed from the comfortable clothes she had spent the day in to a white one-shouldered jumpsuit with a ruffle running the length of one side, purchased off the rack at Ralph Lauren’s Madison Avenue flagship store for just shy of four thousand dollars. Melania says she decides what to wear by diagnosing how she feels each day. And that day she felt like wearing the one designer that Hillary Clinton had relied on for the majority of the campaign. Clinton was well versed in Ralph Lauren, particularly the iconic American designer’s arsenal of tailored pantsuits, many of which he had custom made for Clinton in shades of red, white, and blue. Melania’s jumpsuit was RL, but with its sexy shoulder reveal bore no resemblance to the stodgy, androgynous suits Clinton chose. The choice of white was also one of those curious coincidences (which, as I have said many times, I don’t believe in when it comes to Melania): it not only represents purity and newness but also was worn by suffragettes. Trump, who has told friends he’s always preferred women to wear dresses, not pants, fancied Ivanka Trump’s election-night ensemble more than his wife’s. Ivanka and Tiffany wore girly blue dresses, very short, hems hitting their legs at the upper thigh.

  At another hotel nearby, Hillary Clinton was also wearing Ralph Lauren, a dark gray pantsuit with bright purple lapels to match the purple silk shirt underneath. The vibrancy of the color felt out of place as she conceded victory to Trump.

  Melania, meanwhile, was making her own concessions, trying to conflate being independent with having just become the most important spouse in the free world.

  4

  The Girl from Slovenia

  “There will be good times and hard times and unexpected turns.”

  —MELANIA TRUMP

  As intense as the damage was in her marriage to Donald Trump—the scandals, the adultery charges, the language used in the Access Hollywood tape alone—Melania was loath to consider leaving him, and even more abhorrent was the idea of divorce. She was, like most women in Slovenia, not only raised Catholic but also trained to take
the bad with the good, even if the bad was really, really bad. “Negativism is a national sport, and it does not matter if your cow dies, as long as your neighbor loses at least two” is an apt description of the mind-set of your average Slovene, says Slovenian writer Sandi Gorišek.

  One aspect of Melania Trump that people find most troubling is that she doesn’t smile. But if you understand Slovenians, you know they are not a grinning country. “I don’t fake,” Melania once said to me, explaining why she is often photographed unsmiling. “I’m not someone who smiles or pretends to smile just because there is a camera.” In the string of political wives who have stood by and gazed adoringly at their husbands, frozen smiles pinned on for minutes on end, Melania’s stone coldness is, oddly, refreshing. But to really understand the Melania of today, it’s important to understand where she comes from.

  * * *

  The road to Sevnica, Slovenia, is neither easy to travel nor direct. Nestled in the mountains of Slovenia, some fifty-three miles west of the country’s capital and largest city, Ljubljana, and worlds away from Washington, D.C., it is the hometown of Melania Trump, back when she was Melanija Knavs. The higher the climb up the windy, narrow roads toward Sevnica (pronounced “say-oo-neet-zah”), the more alpine the homes, with fewer and fewer terra-cotta rooftops and more A-line cabins with wooden decks and decorative shutters. Slovenia, population just over two million, is about the size of New Jersey and is bordered by Austria, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, and, to the west, a tiny sliver of the Adriatic Sea.