But since this latest American tragedy, there has been no sighting of Melania Trump — not at the rally where a 20-year-old fired on her husband, or at the Pennsylvania hospital where Secret Service agents whisked him with blood on his face, or at the airport in Milwaukee when he arrived ahead of the Republican National Convention.
On Monday night, when an emotional Donald Trump walked into the RNC without her, the chatter on social media ramped up about “MIA Melania,” an echo of the “Where’s Melania?” memes from their early years in the White House. It turned out those who thought the first lady needed to be rescued were wrong.
As for those now suggesting Melania’s absence is a sign of trouble in her marriage or political indifference: Think again. I spent several years interviewing people in Europe and the United States who knew Melania at every stage of her life, including as a youth in her native Slovenia. I have been at events where she has spoken and even had a rare conversation with her. This is what I know: She and her husband are alike in many ways. They’re often underestimated. But they are fighters who don’t give up, they never stop calculating their next move, and they are exceptionally attuned to the power of photos and images.
Melania knows what she is doing and does what she wants. She doesn’t like public speaking. She is a loner. And she is savvy, fully aware that if she speaks rarely, people will listen more closely. And if she stays in the shadows, she will draw more attention when she steps into the spotlight.
On Sunday, when Melania made her first substantive public comments in almost four years, 30 million people viewed the post on X. Millions more heard about it on TV. She is expected to show up on the final day of the convention, and that photo of the Trumps together will be seen everywhere.
“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” she wrote in her statement. “A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald’s passion — his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration.”
Melania spoke at the last two Republican conventions, but she is not scheduled to speak this week. The spouse’s speech is traditionally a must-watch event, when voters hear from a person with a unique perspective, someone who doesn’t talk about the candidate’s positions on taxes and other issues, but about their character and what they’re like as a human being. For example, Barbara Bush jokingly humanized her sometimes-stiff husband at the 1992 Republican convention. And Michelle Obama, to great effect in 2008, said she found her husband’s first name funny.
The Trumps stand apart from other presidential couples. You can find plenty of photos of other White House couples holding hands or looking affectionate with each other, but not the Trumps. Although there is that video showing Melania swatting her husband’s hand away.
Every couple has its own dynamic, and the Trumps certainly have theirs.
Melania is Trump’s third wife. She is 54 and he is 78. She has battled to have her son, Barron, 18, be more in the family mix alongside Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka — Trump’s older children from his first marriage.
Earlier this month, Trump did something he had never done before and introduced Barron at one of his rallies. When Barron rose, he received a standing ovation, causing Trump to start riffing about how popular he was, even saying, “He might be more popular than Don and Eric.”
Melania met Trump in the late 1990s, around the time he published his book “The Art of the Comeback,” which included some of his thoughts on women: “One thing I have learned: There is high maintenance. There is low maintenance. I want no maintenance.”
Melania doesn’t demand his time or attention. She is happy to do her own thing. But when she really wants something, she usually gets it.
She has been angry with her husband over the years, especially about news reports detailing allegations of his philandering and about how this reflected on her. So it was no surprise to those who know her that she did not accompany her husband to his recent trial in New York, where he faced Stormy Daniels.
The adult-film star alleged that she had sex with Trump just after Melania had given birth to Barron and that Trump paid her $130,000 in hush money. Trump denies Daniels’s allegations, but the jury found him guilty of business fraud related to money paid to her.
Trump is unlike any other presidential candidate in American history. He has never run as a family man, but as a strong man. Melania is unlike any other first lady in history, and not only because she arrived in the United States at the age of 26. In the White House, even though she had a taxpayer-funded East Wing office, she felt no obligation to explain to the public where she was or what she was doing. She even disappeared for weeks on end. Her view is that she is not the elected official, and she can therefore do what she wants.
When needed, she deploys her power.
In November 2016, she agreed to a rare TV interview on CNN just ahead of the election and downplayed her husband’s “boy talk” on the “Access Hollywood” tape, and called him a “gentleman” and a supporter of women.
Behind the scenes, she was the strategist who crafted Trump’s rebuttal that it was “locker room talk” — a feature of the macho candidate.
Melania plays the long game and doesn’t do anything hastily. It might be wiser to be thinking less about where Melania is and more about what she is planning next.
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