by Kate Bennett
It used to be a far less protected situation for first ladies. Before September 11, 2001, they were barely a blip on the Secret Service’s radar and were able to do most things without a lot of agents. There was maybe one Suburban and two chase cars—it was ad hoc at best. From Jacqueline Kennedy to 9/11, not a lot changed. But when the planes struck the Twin Towers, shit got real. Laura Bush, who had a fairly intense travel schedule, suddenly found herself in meetings about global threat levels when she wanted to go somewhere. There was a slow creep up in manpower. One vehicle went to three, then to five, then to nine. By the time Michelle Obama became first lady, the entire FLOTUS Secret Service manual was reorganized and updated. Now she had to be in an armored vehicle, all events would need magnetometers, and tactical teams were standard. Her motorcade for scheduled events grew to at least ten vehicles and often included a communications vehicle, as well as a military aide and a member of the White House medical team.
At present, first ladies are always considered to be potential targets for an enemy. That means life, as they once knew it, is forever altered as soon as their husband wins the election. They may not be POTUS, but they’re the most POTUS adjacent, which places them in a particularly perilous position.
At one point in the not-too-long-ago history of the Secret Service, getting the FLOTUS assignment as an agent used to be so plum that the standard code, FLD, which stands for “first lady detail,” morphed into “fine living and dining.” The life of a first lady usually meant less stress for an agent—much less to do in terms of crowd control and logistics. Less in the way of levels to break through. The views were often better, too. While the president would be stuck at a G20 summit for several days, for example, in decked-out hotel meeting centers, having bilaterals and trilaterals all day long, the first lady would often be touring the host country, seeing the sights, taking in cultural phenomena. In Taormina, Sicily, in May 2017, Trump’s first Group of Seven (G7) summit, he sat with leaders for an expanded session, talking trade and defense and global wellness (all issues he tires of quickly when talk doesn’t match his philosophical and political ideals). Melania, meanwhile, tweeted a picture of the blue waters off the Sicilian coastline from her helicopter, captioning the image, “On my way to lunch & mtgs as part of #G7. Taormina-> Catnia #Italy.” The president was talking global economy with world leaders, and Melania was sightseeing in Sicily, wearing an outfit that cost just shy of the U.S. median household income. (On the ground, she hopped out of her protected vehicle wearing a Dolce and Gabbana jacket with silk floral appliqués—which had a retail price tag of $51,500.) She looked like something out of a Fellini film, letting the wind catch her hair as she stood on the balcony of Catania’s city hall next to other leaders’ spouses, looking nonplussed in their bland dresses with boatnecks and three-quarter sleeves. Odds are, lined up next to Melania, they were questioning every choice they had made getting dressed that morning.
Melania got used to the Secret Service presence more easily than most first ladies, mainly because her husband always had his own private entourage of security, led by the ever-present Keith Schiller, who for almost two decades was Trump’s top bodyguard. She already lived in a world of limousines and chartered planes and VIP entrances, of people to get her to and from, and while it wasn’t her personal preference to have extras hanging around, Melania was accustomed to the upsides of being guarded. When Trump became a candidate with viability, she was given more protection; when he became the Republican nominee, even more so; and once he was president, even when she was still living in New York, she had agents all over the place, outside every door.
The downside to Melania’s not moving into the White House when the president did and, instead, staying in New York City while Barron finished the school year was that Melania’s Secret Service agents were on a rotating shift cycle, which for most of them meant spending two weeks with her and then leaving to guard someone else, returning six weeks later for two more weeks, and then repeating the cycle. The rotation was part of the Secret Service’s protocol, and it bothered most of the agents simply because it didn’t necessarily make logical sense.
Only Melania’s lead agent at the time, a woman named Mindy O’Donnell, was a consistent presence. O’Donnell, by many accounts, wasn’t particularly well liked by others in the Secret Service. Some colleagues questioned how close she was getting to Melania, her main asset; there were rumors that O’Donnell was using the same hairstylist as Melania, a no-no in the Secret Service because there is supposed to be a boundary between the personal life of the agent and the personal affinities of the protected. Other agents on the FLOTUS detail chuckled about O’Donnell’s shoes, which were almost always a chunky heel, higher than what other female agents wore, and certainly less practical. “The lead agent’s main job is to protect the asset from danger, and if that means physically picking the asset up and carrying them to safety, that has to happen,” said one former agent who worked with O’Donnell. “We were always left scratching our heads at the visual of how she would be able to carry the first lady and run in those ridiculous high heels.”
O’Donnell would be replaced in 2018, after a few non-Melania-detail-related conflicts arose. Changes at the helm of an assignment are fairly normal after about a year and a half into the lead agent’s tenure. Melania’s new lead agent was a former college lacrosse champion who came up in the Secret Service ranks, serving in the New York field office during 9/11 and the months after. A team leader on the Counter Assault Team before his promotion to the president’s detail and, eventually, FLD, he’s the one who was quick to catch Melania when she visited an elephant orphanage in Kenya in October 2018, during her first solo trip abroad, to Africa. One of the baby elephants she was feeding with a giant bottle of milk was excited and gave her a friendly nudge, knocking her backward off her footing; in a flash, the agent had his arms up to prevent a fall.
It’s a tricky relationship between a government asset as important as the first lady and her security detail. Building a rapport with the protectee is not frowned upon. In fact, the brief eye contact, the “good morning” or “good evening” twice a day, the familiar face outside the front door—those things can dramatically build trust.
“It put her at a disadvantage,” says the agent of Melania’s constantly rotating detail of agents while she still lived in New York. “We’re not going to talk to her, that’s not our job, but she will need to talk to us, especially if she wants to understand how best to use us to her advantage.”
“That two seconds of banter creates trust, and that makes a relationship,” says another agent with expertise guarding first ladies.
Melania will realize, or won’t, as the case may be, that wheeling and dealing with the Secret Service about what she can and cannot do is a useful and common practice. When Laura Bush would push back on stringent guidelines for a solo trip, for example, she could more easily achieve what she needed because she had that open dialogue with her lead agents. Same with Michelle Obama, who used to like the “freedom” of walking the dogs on the South Lawn of the White House until she realized it meant tourists and pedestrians had to be cleared from the fence line all around the perimeter. She stopped doing it, so as not to unduly bother anyone. However, Michelle got savvy and learned that she could work with the Secret Service to determine the best times of day to walk Bo and Sunny to minimize the impact on civilians and still get her few minutes of fresh air. “You really don’t know what you don’t know until you’re here,” said Michelle of how different life is inside the White House gates.
Later in her tenure, Michelle, whose Secret Service code name was Renaissance, got so good at finagling private time (or so frustrated with not having any) that she was able to keep a routine exercise-class schedule without too much disruption. She went to her boutique fitness spots, SoulCycle for spin class and Solidcore for an amplified Pilates-style workout, with little to no disruption. Her agents would spin alongside her or a few rows behind, or they would wait
outside the door while she had one-on-one classes. Michelle even once had an itch to do some shopping and walk around a mall, “just like a normal person,” she told her detail’s operations leader. It was a bit of a horse trade getting the negotiation settled—she’d have to forgo fancy clothes and makeup and keep her hair in a ponytail, under a baseball cap, and not tell anyone she was going to do it. For a couple of hours one random weekday, Michelle Obama was able to cruise around Pentagon City Mall in nearby Northern Virginia, and not a soul knew who she was.
This is the sort of stuff Melania hasn’t quite figured out how to accomplish—if she even wants to. She is able to sneak off to New York City, which she does with regularity, mostly for fittings with her stylist, Hervé Pierre, at her Trump Tower penthouse, and for hair color appointments. Her longtime hairstylist, Mordechai Alvow, tends to her locks in private these days, also at the penthouse. One time in 2018, Melania flew on a government 757 down to Mar-a-Lago for an overnight, and no one would have known had a CNN reporter (me) not gotten wind of it and broken the story. After making a few calls, it was confirmed that Melania had indeed slipped down to Florida for a quick trip, the purpose of which her office said was “personal.” The president’s schedule can’t be “personal,” as his movements must be revealed and put on public record. Hers do not. He must have a protective press pool—the small group of rotating members of the White House press corps who are there to document or be on standby for the president’s every move—with him during all of his movements. She does not have to. She can deploy the “it’s personal” button and travel without having to really tell anyone if she doesn’t feel like it.
But simply put, Melania Trump’s life for nearly three years very much isn’t her own, and that has been the most difficult aspect of being first lady for her to wrestle with. When Melania went from being Mrs. Trump to Muse, her Secret Service code name, which like those of her husband (Mogul) and others in her family were chosen from a list provided by the White House Military Office, she became a thing more than a person. Her life, her privacy, and her motives were now open to questioning and speculation by millions and millions of people—no longer her own to control. And the White House executive residence was not her house, though she would hire an interior decorator to try making the mood and vibe more familiar. “It’s hard to explain how big it is, but then also how small at the same time,” says someone who has worked closely with first families. “Living in the White House is brutal.”
Working there was something else Melania had to get used to. She had been without a “job” for several years, having dismantled her QVC jewelry and watch line. Now here she was with the most thankless job in a president’s administration. Not only is the job undefined, it is unpaid—yet it places a level of expectation on the jobholder that is higher than for any other member of the administration, except for the president.
To think about it fairly, Melania had gone from the comfort and privacy of essentially being a wealthy, stay-at-home soccer mom with a somewhat regular schedule of evening social events and travel to her different homes around the country to overseeing the 55,000 square foot “People’s House,” a large operation.
There are approximately one hundred staffers who run everything at the White House behind the scenes. There’s the floral department, the lead of which had to “audition” in front of Michelle Obama in a sort of American Idol format, creating with other contenders what she thought were her best floral arrangements until the “winner” was announced. Hedieh Ghaffarian became chief floral designer in 2015, and Melania has kept her around, pleased with the work Ghaffarian and her small team churn out from the White House flower shop, a space in the basement, not far from the kitchen. Each first lady articulates her overall style, Melania included. For Laura Bush, florals and greenery were tailored and sculpted; Michelle Obama liked a more natural garden style, sort of wild and filled with colorful flowers. For Melania, it’s clean, chic, and generally monochromatic. Ghaffarian has at least two full-time staff members on the floral team, one of whom has been there for more than two decades. It might seem like a lot for flowers, but the team is responsible not only for the White House (East Wing, West Wing, and residence) but also Camp David (when there are visitors) and Blair House (where foreign dignitaries stay).
Then there are the ushers and butlers and housekeeping staff, all of whom are overseen by the chief usher, Timothy Harleth, who previously worked at the Trump International Hotel in Washington—keeping it in the family, so to speak. Harleth replaced Angella Reid, a holdover from the Obama years who was not particularly well liked by the household staff. Reid, on the job for six years when she was asked to leave, was strict and foreboding. In the spring of 2017, about a month before she moved full-time into the White House, Melania had her fired. It made news for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the role of chief usher is one typically held for many years by the same person, often until retirement. Since 1900, there had only been nine chief ushers when Reid was fired.
Her dismissal might have earned Melania scorn from the media (Reid was the first female and second African American chief usher in the history of the role), but the move actually made her popular inside the White House.
As Melania was in Washington more and more ahead of her move, she had gotten to know the staff of the executive residence quite well. No stranger to “help,” as it were (she was a Trump, after all), Melania immediately earned a reputation for being kind and warm to the staff. One evening, having settled dinner and clean-up and preparation for the next day, Melania decided to let one of the regular residence butlers go home early for the night. She was, after all, mistress of the house, and whatever she desired was to be followed. The butler, surprised but grateful, departed. The following night, Melania repeated the same routine, getting word to the butler that he could head out early, since he was no longer needed and she could handle whatever she might want by herself. So she was surprised when she walked into the private kitchen later that night and found him still there. She asked him why, since she had dismissed him earlier. Reluctantly, the butler shared that Reid found out about his early departure the previous evening and admonished him, docking his pay for the hours he was given off by the first lady. Not wanting to face Reid again and be punished for accepting the kind gesture from Melania, he had stayed on that evening.
Though not the only reason Melania fired Reid—she had heard enough stories to understand that the chief usher was not well liked or well respected by the staff—the incident with the butler was certainly the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I think it’s best if the White House explains,” is what Reid told The Washington Post when asked for comment on her dismissal. Of course, the White House didn’t give a reason; it only said that it wished Reid the best.
Besides the chief usher and the butlers, there are maids and cooks, maintenance workers and groundskeepers, though the latter are technically employed by the National Park Service, since the land on which the White House sits, all eighteen acres of it, is a national park. The White House itself is vast, as noted earlier, spreading across six floors, plus two hidden mezzanine levels. It is like Downton Abbey, only more modern and on steroids.
For a first lady, overseeing the operational aspects of the White House and working with its staff, most of whom have stayed on for years and years, unaffected by administration changes, can be challenging in that the role inside the house is not political. A person I spoke with who used to work in the White House in a senior management role and who is still on speaking terms with the current household staff tells me they “rave” about Melania as a boss, and do the same about Trump. Staff members, whether Hispanic or African American, or white, for that matter, have a personal relationship with the Trumps, and how they as bosses handle that responsibility is what makes them likable or not likable.
“We love to live in Washington; we have a very busy life. It’s exciting, as well,” Melania told me when I interviewed her in Chin
a, on the Great Wall, just a week or so before a private media lunch she held back at the White House. Our brief chat was her first solo, on-camera interview since becoming first lady, ironically on CNN, the network nemesis of her husband. She was friendly during our encounter, and when she arrived at our hastily set up shooting area, on a small terrace at the base of the funicular that takes people up to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, she was somewhat breathless, having walked a few flights of steps to greet us. Since I had taken the same route about an hour before, I was familiar with the climb and the altitude’s effect. “Would you like a minute to catch your breath before we start?” I asked. She smiled, and laughed for a second, relieved, I think, that I had noticed and made the offer.
During our one-on-one, I also asked what had been the most challenging part of the new gig so far. She paused, gave it a moment of thought, and said something that, while simple, spoke volumes about how her life of leisure had been upended. “It’s a lot of things that we need to take care of and a lot of responsibilities.” Sure, this sounds canned, even maybe disingenuous, but I think she was being truthful. Melania, I am certain, was ill prepared for what she encountered when she moved to the White House. She had no one to speak with in detail about it beforehand. Who was she going to call? Barbara Bush? Her husband had just spent the campaign calling Bush’s son names. Michelle Obama? Not a fan. Hillary Clinton? In essence, she entered the biggest job of her life without anyone telling her how to do said job or what said job would really consist of.