Since leaving the White House, Melania Trump’s world has got smaller.
Just how she likes it.
Cloistered behind the gates of her three homes, she sticks to a small circle – her son, her elderly parents and a handful of old friends. She visits her hairdressers, consults with Hervé Pierre, her long-time stylist, and sometimes meets her husband for Friday night dinner at their clubs. But her most ardent pursuit is a personal campaign: helping her son, Barron (17), with his college search.
What she has not done, despite invitations from her husband, is appear on the campaign trail. Nor has she been at his side for any of his court appearances.
These are the days of Melania Trump, former first lady, current campaign spouse and wife to one of the most divisive figures in American public life. Unlike her predecessors, there are no plans for a speaking tour, a book or a major expansion of her charitable efforts, most of which, people close to the Trumps say, are not fully visible to the public. In her post-presidential life, she wants what she could not get in the White House: a sense of privacy.
Those efforts to retreat from public life have been complicated by her husband, who has turned her once again into a candidate’s spouse. As Donald Trump faces a possible third indictment, she has remained steadfastly silent about his increasing legal peril.
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While she supports his presidential bid, Ms Trump has not appeared on the trail since he announced his campaign in November and did not utter a public word about his effort until May, when she endorsed him in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“He has my support, and we look forward to restoring hope for the future and leading America with love and strength,” she said.
Her absence is a striking difference from the start of the first Trump campaign, when Ms Trump, wearing a white strapless dress, descended the golden escalator in front of her husband at his campaign kickoff at Trump Tower.
Ms Trump remains in touch and friendly with a small group of people from her time in the White House, including the designer Rachel Roy and Hilary Geary Ross, the prominent Palm Beach networker and wife of Wilbur Ross, Mr Trump’s former commerce secretary. She remains especially close with her parents, who have an apartment at Trump Tower in Manhattan and have been spotted at Trump events at Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ private club and residence.
“From her point of view and her friends’ point of view, she’s been through a lot and she’s come out a strong independent woman,” said R Couri Hay, a publicist, who was an acquaintance of Ms Trump’s in New York before she headed to Washington. “She’s learned how to close the door and close the shutters and remain private. We don’t see a lot, we don’t hear a lot.”
Ms Trump declined an interview request. This account is based on a dozen interviews with associates, campaign aides and friends, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the private details of her life.
People close to the family say Ms Trump’s lack of public support should not be confused with disapproval or indifference. She remains defensive of her husband, sharing his belief that their family has been unfairly attacked. Deeply distrustful of the mainstream media, she is an avid reader of the Daily Mail online, tracking Mr Trump’s coverage in the conservative British tabloid.
Ms Trump is particularly sceptical of the case by E Jean Carroll, who won $5 million (€4.5 million) in damages in a trial accusing Trump of sexual abuse in the 1990s and defamation after he left the White House, according to two people familiar with her remarks. When Ms Trump saw coverage of her husband’s deposition in the case, she was livid at his legal team for failing to do more to raise objections. She has also privately questioned why Carroll could not recall the precise date of the alleged assault.
Still, Ms Trump believes that despite the legal peril, Mr Trump could return to the White House next year. In private, she has expressed curiosity about Casey DeSantis, the wife of Mr Trump’s chief rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Ms DeSantis is a close adviser to her husband and a regular presence at his events, and she has begun to campaign for him on her own. In one of her rare interviews, Ms Trump mused to Fox News about having a second chance at being first lady, saying she would “prioritise the wellbeing and development of children” if she reprised the role.
But she has not yet prioritised campaigning. Although she has expressed willingness to do events for her husband next year, she has so far refused his requests to join him on the stump.
“I don’t think it’s going to be anything like what we’ve seen with Casey DeSantis,” said Stephanie Grisham, a former Mr Trump aide who quit on January 6th, 2021, following the storming of the US Capitol by Mr Trump supporters. “She’s not going to be throwing on jeans and walking in parades.”
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Kellyanne Conway, a long-time Mr Trump adviser who is also close with Ms Trump, said the former first lady was “all in” on her husband’s candidacy and remained his “most trusted and most transparent adviser”. Both Trumps, she said, had privately discussed “priorities” for a second term.
“I know few people as comfortable in their skin as Melania Trump,” said Conway, who is not working for the campaign. “She knows who she is and keeps her priorities in check. Melania keeps them guessing, and they keep guessing wrong.”
Most of Ms Trump’s public profile, conducted largely through her social media accounts, is focused on selling a variety of digital trading cards. Her NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, include digital drawings of her eyes, a broadbrimmed hat worn during a state visit, White House Christmas ornaments and a blue rose intended to commemorate National Foster Care Month.
The majority of her tweets and Instagram posts directly promote the NFTs or a business called USA Memorabilia, which sells them. A day after Mr Trump announced on his social media website Truth Social that he had received a target letter in the federal investigation into his efforts to thwart the transfer of power in 2020, Ms Trump’s only public comment was an announcement of a new “Man on the Moon” NFT collection.
A portion of her proceeds is donated, though her aides would not provide details about the amount given or specify the charity.
While first ladies often capitalise on the attendant fame, Ms Trump’s moneymaking venture is different from those of her predecessors, said Kate Andersen Brower, the author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.”
Michelle Obama was reportedly paid more than $60 million in a joint book deal with her husband, as well as commanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches and signing a lucrative production deal with Netflix. Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton also sold their memoirs for millions. Their memoirs and paid speeches required the former first ladies to share some details about themselves, their views and their lives in the White House.
By simply selling images, Ms Trump reveals nothing.
That’s exactly how she likes it, Brower said.
“She’s the most obviously unknowable first lady,” she said of Ms Trump’s public persona. “There’s something radical about it. First ladies are expected to want to please people and I’m not sure she really cares.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
