I’ve always been interested in First Ladies, those unsung (and unpaid) women in the White House who use their considerable and self-shaped powers for good or evil.
Some like Dolly Madison serve in times of war; she managed to save a portrait of George Washington as the British troops were trying to burn down the White House in the War of 1812
At least a couple ran the presidency for an infirm husband (Edith Wilson is one of them)
Some arrived at the White House with a career and a resume, like Laura Bush or Michelle Obama. Jill Biden wanted to be called “Dr. Biden,” but technically Michelle and Hillary had the doctor title, too, as they held J.D. degrees. However, lawyers tend to opt out of using “doctor”
Some ran their own political agenda right out of the White House but not as a “helper,” as an independent person. Eleanor Roosevelt, considered by some the “best” First Lady ever, was the most politically active
Some partnered with their husbands to emerge as a sort of co-president (Abigail Adams, Hillary Clinton)
Two were wives of one president and mothers of another (Abigail Adams and Barbara Bush)
Some were considered spendthrifts (Mary Todd Lincoln) and others corrupt (Florence Harding who was considered complicit in her husband’s corruption)
Some were considered icons of style, and here Jackie Kennedy ranks high in this regard
Some caught their husbands fooling around in the White House (Hillary Clinton, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, likely others). No First Lady ever divorced her husband while they were in the White House or ever, for that matter
At least one First Lady was beaten by her husband during her tenure at the White House—that we know of. The one we know of is Pat Nixon
At least two First Ladies were rumored to have mental health issues, Jane Pierce (who became a recluse while in the White House) and Mary Todd Lincoln
Of all First Ladies, Melania Knaus Trump has always seemed the most enigmatic to me. She’s not a recluse, like Jane Pierce, but her public apperances are sporadic and her demeanor is hard to read.
She isn’t outspoken like Michelle Obama or curt like Hillary Clinton or self-deprecating like Barbara Bush. Although many people (mostly lefties) don’t like her, it is hard to point out any real character flaws. She isn’t rude or brash or unkind or foolish or pushing some political agenda.
Her facial expressions are rarely expressive. She reminds me of the late Princess Diana, who was very famous but did not speak very much. People fixated on Diana’s face and posture because her words were so few.
Melania stays far away from politics and sometimes far away from the White House. In fact, she’s been criticized for being only a part-time resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (Jackie Kennedy did the same, but it was not as widely reported. Mrs. Kennedy maintained her own house in Virginia where she often stayed with her children.) In the case of Melania, she divides her time between the White House, Mar-A-Lago, and Trump Tower in New York City. The last one is her residence of preference.
Melania’s new memoirs are intriguing, because maybe she was finally going to reveal a bit more of her personality, her concerns, even her hopes and fears. Books always offer more details than online content, but Melania’s new memoir has some strange omissions. Perhaps they were purposeful.
For instance, Melania talks about the ride down the escalator on the day in 2016 when Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President. She talked in detail about how the event was choreographed and that Barron was standing with his half-brothers and half-sisters at the bottom of the elevator. She described how she rode down with Trump and then quickly moved to join her son and the other Trump kids. She knew what Trump was going to say, and she knew that day would change all of their lives. But what she doesn’t talk about, curiously, is how the decision was reached that Trump would run for office. She never describes any conversations that she may have had with her husband about this monumental decision. She does not tip her hand—you don’t know if she liked the idea, disliked it, hated it, or pushed him to do it. One day they’re living in Trump Tower as a rich power couple in Manhattan, the next day Donald Trump is running for President.
There is so much missing. Was she in favor of the decision? Rumors and online reports say she had misgivings, but she does not report any in this book. Some people have speculated that her failure to move full-time into the White House was a statement—that she was not whole-heartedly in support of her husband’s presidency. But she is completely quiet on this topic.
Then again, Melania doesn’t talk about any causes with passion. She’s not a zealot or an activist. She is beautiful and neutral, just like her facial expression in most photos. On the other hand, she doesn’t mock activism or dismiss causes or deride any people, either. Jill Biden wanted the world to honor her with her honorifics; Michelle Obama wanted the world to sympathize with how badly the world had victimized her; Nancy Reagan wanted the world to applaud her husband; Laura Bush wanted her husband to stay sober. Melania stands back, or maybe it’s more accurate to say she stands apart.
The book is lightweight; short, easy to read, not very provocative. The best part is that it is packed with photos and you can’t deny that the woman takes a good photo.
Some people have reviewed the book saying it is boring and superficial, and it certainly departs from the model of the juicy tell-all books some celebrities write. You won’t learn about what things upset Donald, if and when they fought, or how he felt about almost getting his head blown off in Butler, Pennsylvania. If you want to hear about drug-fueled sex-capades, this is not the book for you. Maybe you need to look in the Hunter Biden section for those kind of White House memoirs. This one contains no gossip, no scandal, no trash talk, no seamy confessions.
But I did learn some things.
Take-Aways
The first thing I learned is that Melania is extraordinarily ambitious. She was a woman of some means before she ever met Donald due to her supermodel status. Later on, she embarked on various upper-class-woman business ventures involving jewelry, skin care products, and clothing. Online sources estimate that her personal wealth is about $50M. That doesn’t put her in the billionaire stratosphere of her husband, but Melania was independently wealthy when she met Donald Trump. When dealing with the occasional accusations that she was a gold-digger, she points out aptly that as a super-model she could meet all kinds of rich and powerful men, including celebrity actors. She ran in the same social circles in Manhattan as Trump, in fact, that’s how they met.
While still a school girl in the little country of Slovenia, Melania already had two distinct career paths she was pursuing in tandem. On the one hand, she wanted to be an architect. Living in a communist country at the time, university tuition was free but you had to qualify to get a place and competition was fierce for the few university seats available. Melania applied herself to years of studying to make the grade—and she did. This required her to move away from her family’s little village to Ljubljana, the nearest “big city” and, oddly enough, the birthplace of my own grandfather.
Melania, along with her sister Ines, were both dabbling in modeling work even as kids. Modeling work in Slovenia was lucrative, but only occasionally available. When talking about modeling, Melania reveals some insights into her own character. She liked to model, even as a kid, but she thought architecture was a better career path. Modeling was fun to her—she genuinely liked the clothes, the people, and the easy camaraderie among the photographers, editors, make-up artists, and other models. Architecture was more serious work but she saw the pathways to success in that field. As Melania entered her middle and late teens, she started to be a standout among models, even winning competitions and being invited to join an agency in Milan, Italy. She recognized that she was excelling at this career path. She was doing well at university, but she was doing gangbusters as a model.
Soon she relocated from Milan to Paris and then to New York, which she says is her favorite city in the world.
Melania pursued modeling in part because of something Ines told her. Ines said, “You don’t look like anybody else.” In a world of cookie-cutter models, Melania with her slanted eyes had an unusual yet captivating appearance. Melania realized before she hit 20 years old that being different was a marketable asset.
On the other hand, Melania also knew where she didn’t fit. Melania grew up in the days of the gaunt-faced, flat-chested, anorexic supermodel with their stick figures and sunken cheeks. She recognized pretty quickly that she wasn’t runway model material because in the world of the starving super model, Melania was considered “full figured.” She was curvy. Rather than despair or give up modeling, Melania pivoted to different types of modeling, doing lots of print advertisements and product advertisements rather than going on the catwalk with the big couture houses. She worked more than most runway models and made a lot of money, but it was out of the limelight.
Melania had an ability to see where she fit in and where she didn’t.
When she had to make a choice as to whether to pursue architecture or to become a full-time model, her decision process showed her profound confidence for one so young. She said she debated the decision for a while, but she never worried because she knew that she could be successful in either field.
She opted for modeling, in part because the lifestyle of travel and social engagements appealed to her. In her younger years, Melania was an outgoing type who enjoyed travel, upscale parties, and being driven around in limos. (She writes specifically about enjoying being ferried around in limos.)
After a short period of dating, she lived for six years with Donald Trump in his penthouse atop Trump Tower before they married. She said they loved each other but this memoir is not about personal feelings. I guess we can read into the fact that two rich people who live together are living together by choice and not necessity.
During this time, Donald and Melania were celebrities. Donald Trump appeared on television and was friendly with folks like Howard Stern and Joy Behar, people who would later call him Hitler. Melania was friendly with the hotshots of the New York fashion scene. Among her friends was Anna Wintour, the legendary editor of Vogue magazine (she’s the one on whom the Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada is based). In fact, when Donald proposed marriage to Melania, it was Anna Wintour who called Melania to help her pick out her wedding dress. That’s right, Vogue contacted Melania about her wedding dress and later put Melania on the cover of Vogue in the gown. That was before Donald and Melania got cooties.
There is a bit of a scandal brewing now about Melania doing a cover shoot for Vanity Fair magazine. It is said she was offered the cover but turned it down. It is also said that many employees at Vanity Fair said they’d quit if Melania was put on the cover. But get a grip, fashionistas. Melania has already been on the cover of Vogue and Vogue is light-years beyond Vanity Fair. She’s also already been on the cover of the Mexican edition of Vanity Fair and many other magazines. Plus, Melania—in case you alleged journalists at Vanity Fair haven’t noticed—has other interests now.
Mrs. Hitler
So did Melania “laugh at the offer” as some say or did the magazine refuse to “normalize” Hitler’s wife as the leftists say? Regardless of the answer, it points to something rather odd.
Before Trump entered politics, he was feted, celebrated, and his fun-loving, loud, and larger-than-life personality was enjoyed by the crowd of Manhattan liberals among whom he roamed free. And those same Manhattan elites crowed over Melania. It stunned me to learn from Melania’s book that Anna Wintour was a friend of hers—Nuclear Wintour (as her staff sometimes called her) wouldn’t deign to speak to Melania today.
It didn’t take much time to pass before Wintour and other fashion magazine editors had banned Melania from all covers. Wintour claimed she was moving away from models and more toward celebrities, which is why she put Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, and even Jill Biden on the cover of her magazines. And it gave her a nice out as to why Melania was suddenly persona non grata.
The same thing happened to Donald Trump. He was everybody’s pal up until he came down that escalator. The denizens of the left, such as Matt Lauer and Bill and Hillary Clinton and many others, attended the Trump wedding. When Donald married Melania, they were a hot celebrity couple embedded deep in lefty Manhattan privilege.
Look at them now.
It did not take long before Donald Trump was ridiculed, rejected, canceled, sued, accused of rape, and even shot at. What happened? What made their favorite celebrity and amateur comedian, Donald Trump, sudden morph into the personification of evil? And what made sexy Melania suddenly too homely to even be on the cover of TV Guide?
What made otherwise intelligent people say that putting Melania on a magazine cover or giving Donald Trump a platform to speak was “normalizing evil”? How did they go from being insiders to being Nazis in about two hours?
Did the world go insane? It must have been dizzying for Donald and Melania Trump to walk out of the warm spotlight of Manhattan high society to being called Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun… by the same people who once had them on speed dial, who adored them, and who considered an invitation to a Trump party a treasure.
Melania does not speculate on these things, which is probably why she has good mental health. In the book, she blandly observes the shift and then dismisses her persecutors. She doesn’t say it in exactly these words, but her attitude is that it’s not her job to make sure everyone around her is sane. The time she wore the iconic jacket that said, “I really don’t care, do you?” might have been her motto. If you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, that is not her problem to solve.
Populist Go the Weasels
I think I know why the elites suddenly dissed the Trumps.
Donald Trump embraced a populist message. Populist comes from the word for people, in the sense of being the opposite of the elites. Populists aren’t about the rich and powerful getting more, they’re about helping people and bringing the concerns of everyday people to light.
Donald Trump left the elitist bunker in Manhattan, where the rich and the very rich continued lobbing potshots at the great unwashed people of the flyover states. Not only was Donald Trump not insulting poor people, he made the great mistake of actually talking to them.
For her part, Melania was OK with a president who seemed to care about people who shopped at Wal-Mart, even though she grew up in relatively affluent circumstances but in a communist nation. She did not grow up in poverty, but she observed it. She did grow up in a little country that got pushed around by its bigger neighbors, and she knew what it felt like when you didn’t have all the advantages of other people. She always expected to have to make her own way in the world, which is why America appealed to her, long before she ever met Donald Trump.
Donald Trump always loved America as the land of working people and Melania always loved America as the land where working people’s dreams come true. Unlike people like Bill and Hillary Clinton or Anna Wintour or the Obamas, Donald Trump was very comfortable around working class people, and it showed. Not only that, Donald Trump didn’t pander to working class people, adopting fake accents or dumbing down his speech. He talked to working class joes the same way he talked to the billionaire boys, and the billionaire sure did not like that.
Melania was close to a working class person, at least when she started out, and her ties to Slovenia mean she has a heart and compassion for people who aren’t born to ease and luxury. Melania nearly grew up outside the limelight, and she respects people who work hard but never get rich and famous.
Donald and Melania Trump didn’t normalize nazism. They normalized the American middle class. Donald Trump embraced working people. He spoke our language, he shared our humor, he ate our food. Donald Trump had common sense. The things that bothered us, bothered him—crime, an open border, runaway inflation, high taxes with no controls on Congressional spending, and badly run government institutions. And Trump has problems we can all relate to—all of us know what it’s like to be bullied by leftists and insulted by people who shouldn’t be allowed to carry your suitcase. All of us know what it’s like to have trouble managing our weight and to feel pressured by situations that sometimes seem beyond our control. The people who related to this new political Donald Trump were not the elites, they were the middle class, and if there is one thing that the elites despite, it’s the middle class.
(I don’t think elites despite poor people; I think the rich and poor go together hand-in-glove, like nobles and serfs and kings and peasants. The people the elites hate are working people who are doing well by virtue of their own intelligence, drive, and skills rather than a trust fund or some stupidly overpaid job like being a famous actor who earns millions of dollars for three months of work.)
When it was clear that Donald Trump was running for office to champion the middle class rather than throw more money at the rich and poor, his old friends turned on him. Trump was fun and games to the elites as long as he was only playing for money. Now that Trump was trying to get power and making it clear he was not going to use that power to benefit the rich, things changed.
Joy Behar of that horrible show The View adored rich playboy Donald Trump and fawned all over him; nowadays, she practically spits on powerful Trump every chance she gets. I don’t think there is a bad word she ever didn’t lob at him and lately she’s been vocally wishing for his demise. The two people on Morning Joe used to cater to rich celebrity Trump, but as soon as he got a bit of power—let alone control of Congress, the Supreme Court, and upended the mainstream media—it was game over. They call him Hitler without even wincing. It’s like they believe what they’re saying. Hillary Clinton went to Trump’s wedding and a few years later, orchestrated a coup to take him down.
Donald Trump was suddenly and then consistently maligned, abused, and punished and Melania bore that disgrace with him. During his first term of office, Melania mainly hid out. She writes in her memoir that she was busy raising their son Barron, and she considered that job—even now—to be the most important work she’s ever done. But maybe she was just hiding away from the abuses of all of the people who once called her friend, who once wanted to go out shopping with her, who used to call her for a brunch date.
Melania 2025 is a bit different. She’s still verbally reclusive and as private as only an Eastern European person can be. She conceals more emotions than she ever shows, and she is reticent to expose too much of herself or her family to the wolves that seem to camp out at her door. But she’s changed and changing.
Melania has always expressed herself in her clothing. A lot of this goes over my head since I don’t read fashion well, but I’ve seen fashion people comment on her choice of what to wear when. For example, in Trump’s first term, they visited India, where Melania wore an Indian-inspired gown but it was white. India is a land of bright colors and bold fabrics, and Melania opted to blend a homage to Indian style with the message that she was from a different land. In other words, a white outfit with Indian lines was a way to stand out while being respectful and fitting in at the same time.
During Trump’s first inauguration, she showed herself to be as stylish as Jackie Kennedy Onassis in her blue outfit with the blue gloves.
In this current term, Melania dressed in a sharp, austere, black-and-white look that reminded me of the Mafia or at least a Godfather movie poster. Melania 2025 cried or nearly cried in public around the time her mother died. She did not show that kind of emotion in her first term as First Lady. She still dresses in high-end designer clothes, but she’s wearing more suits and business looks these days. I see her in flats more often. Overall, her fashion these days is simple, stylish, and low key. But she dresses like a person to take seriously. She’s older now, and she’s not trying to wow the editors at Vogue. She’s trying to move more into her power.
It would not surprise me if Melania embarked on more advocacy programs this term, but who knows?
I do predict that lefties will hate this book, if they even notice it, probably because Melania says nothing bad about Donald. She doesn’t accuse him of misdeeds or perversions or corruption or even being a neglectful husband. If lefties expected Melania to announce she hated Trump, they’ll be disappointed. If anything, she describes a man who is somewhat more modest and more human than his political proportions, a guy who has common sense and boundless energy, and a man who loves her. But she also describes an unusual relationship of two people who are not afraid to be apart or pursue their own interests.
If you’re looking for dirt, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for Melania to express her deepest personal thoughts, you’ll be disappointed. Melania does write a bit about Barron, but she exposes no personal details about him. You won’t find out if he has a girlfriend or if he’s really an expert chess player or if he harbors political ambitions. She does write a bit about his education and about trying to raise a normal young man in a very abnormal environment.
The book doesn’t say this, but here is a fun fact. In 2015… long after they first met, long after they got married, and long after Barron was born … Donald Trump gave Melania a 15-carat emerald ring. That’s a major rock and it’s worth maybe $4M (it’s always hard to set a value on unique jewelry). It was an anniversary ring, not a wedding ring. You know, the kind of thing that Hitler would have bought for Eva Braun.