With her squinted, smouldering eyes and pursed lips, Melania Trump is more like the rich aunty with the Birkin bag than the sweet, Barbara Bush-esque grandmother trying to feed you the contents of her kitchen cupboards. Her beauty and dress sense make her more suited to a runway than the west wing of the White House; her coldness is palpable. It is this, and her truancy from public life that make her the most mysterious, and the least popular First Lady in American history.
Melania has been largely uninvolved with her husband’s latest presidential campaign and was, more understandably, absent during Donald Trump’s four recent court cases, one being the criminal case in which he was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Apart from a few sightings at Mar-a-Lago, the couple’s resort in Palm Beach, you’d be right to wonder if Melania was still in the country. A few months back when Donald Trump was shot at by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks at a rally in Pennsylvania, his wife watched on television.
But now, for the first time since her husband’s presidency, the former FLOTUS is talking. Earlier this month, in a video posted to social media, she set out to tell us, “My story, my perspective, the truth,” which will culminate in her forthcoming memoir, Melania, set to be released on October 8, less than one month before the presidential election. Why now, you might ask, after saying nothing of substance for four years, and very little even during her time in the White House?
While the flip in her PR strategy is intentional, the methods are certainly odd. And so far, her sudden re-emergence back into public life has raised more questions than answers. We’ve had eight perfectly shot video clips posted to her X account, all in black and white or sepia tones, showing Melania talking about everything from FBI raids: “The FBI raided my home in Florida and searched through my personal belongings. This is not just my story, it serves as a warning to all Americans, a reminder that our freedom and rights must be respected”, to motherhood “The lessons I have learned from this experience are profound, and they have shaped me in ways I could never have imagined,” to Bidenomics, free speech, and, bizarrely, her nude modelling pictures.
In the most noteworthy video she asks, “Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modelling work?” while images flash up of John Collier’s Lady Godiva and Michelangelo’s David. “The more pressing question is, ‘Why has the media chosen to scrutinise my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot?’” The problem is, they haven’t. At least, not for nearly a decade. Mrs. Trump’s nude shoots — one for a French magazine in 1995, then another for British GQ on Trump’s private jet in the year 2000 — have barely been referred to since the run up to the 2016 election. While it may have been a flash in the pan for the rest of the world, the media’s focus on Melania’s supermodel past is clearly something that has bothered her for the last decade, and I suspect will feature heavily in her memoir.
In trying to present a counternarrative to something nobody is really saying, the videos are a window into what the once and possibly future first lady thinks about, what she is troubled by, and the fact that she is perhaps not as immune to the public eye as she has long appeared. According to staffers close to her, “Melania felt burned by the media after repeatedly letting them in and being screwed, particularly by the Daily Mail.” In fairness, while she did make some glaring faux pas, such as the “I really don’t care, do you?” coat during a trip to a migrant child detention centre, Melania had a pretty rough ride as FLOTUS. In her first few months in the role, designers refused to dress her. Marc Jacobs said he had “no interest” in her wearing his clothes, while Tom Ford claimed “she’s not necessarily my image.” After having photoshoots of Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Nancy Reagan, Michelle Obama and most recently Jill Biden, when Vogue editor Anna Wintour was asked why Melania wasn’t featured in Vogue as First Lady, she replied, “I think it’s important for Vogue to support women who are leading change in this country.”
If the mystifying teaser videos don’t grab you, don’t worry, there’s more. Melania Trump is also selling her own merch. This week the former First Lady unveiled her “2024 Limited Edition Ornament series,” titled Merry Christmas, AMERICA!, where she is selling brass Christmas tree ornaments for 90 pounds a pop.
Quite unlike her husband, Melania Trump is perfectly happy away from the public eye. After winning the election in 2016, it took her more than six months to move from New York City to the White House, and it is widely speculated that if the Trumps were to win in November, she wouldn’t even consider moving to DC full time. She does what she likes, and what she likes is to shy from attention and not tell anyone what she is thinking. But her virtual absence from the campaign and the centre of American political life is unsustainable. Her recent catapult into the news cycle is her recognition of that. The memoir, the videos, the Christmas baubles: this is how she is rectifying her multi-year-long retreat. What this suggests is that she, like her husband, is willing to switch up strategies when she has something to sell. If she gets it right, Melania could be exactly what Trump’s campaign needs.
[See also: Volodymyr Zelensky takes his war to small-town America]
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