New book reveals bombshell claim about Donald and Melania Trump’s marriage

An explosive claim about the First Lady and her marriage to President Donald Trump has dropped – and it explains so much.

OPINION

The Sphinx was built about 4500 years ago by someone named Pharaoh Khafre who married his sister, because speed dating had not yet been invented.

Isn’t it fun that we know about as much about Khafre as we do about American First Lady and pouting prodigy Melania Trump, whose inscrutability often sees her compared to his famed big bit of leonine stone?

Ever since Mrs Trump’s husband, otherwise known as President Donald Trump or McDonald’s Dupont Circle’s number one customer, rode down a gold elevator in 2015 and announced he wanted to have a go at running the free world and really getting the smell of deep fryer grease into the Air Force One upholstery, she has essentially been a blank page.

A decade on and by and large, Mrs Trump is still a void, an enigma, a cipher.

Jackie Kennedy if she had never read Proust in the original. Laura Bush without the three-Xanax gaze.

What’s going on with the Trumps? Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

No longer. Now, a new book has offered a shocking new insight into Mrs Trump’s closed world, including what she really thinks about her husband of 20 years.

I’m warning you now, things are about to get ugly.

Quite simply, “she f***ing hates him”, a “Mar-a-Lago patio confidant” of Mr Trump has told renowned biographer Michael Wolff. In fact, the “confidant” was “bewildered that this needed saying”.

This comes via excerpts from Mr Wolff’s new book All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, and in the exclusive excerpts run by The Daily Beast over the weekend, the author makes the Trump marriage sound about as warm and cozy as an Antarctic ice dip and involving just as much shrinkage.

How bad are things?

Apparently, Mr Trump’s team did not even know where Mrs Trump was living during last year’s election campaign. (According to the Beast, “those in [Mr Trump’s] inner circle [speculated] that Melania had a separate apartment” in Trump Tower).

At the 2024 Republican National Convention, the 54-year-old former professional bikini wearer “flatly refused” to make a planned “showstopper” speech.

Apparently, Mr Trump’s team did not even know where Mrs Trump was living during last year’s election campaign. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP

And a year before that, when the suggestion was made to Mrs Trump that she accompany Mr Trump to his first indictment, it was met with laughter and she replied, “Nice try”.

Mr Wolff, according to the extracts in the Beast, says that during 2024, “the most public marriage in the nation was breaking down”.

Of the President’s marriage, Mr Wolff writes, “This is the darkest Trump hole”.

“It may be, on its own peculiar terms, the most successful marriage in America. Or, it may be ready to blow up at any moment.”

(The White House, in response to Mr Wolff’s claims, called him “a lying sack of s***”. Golly, such a standard of discourse).

So, Melania. Join me now in yelling, at the top of our lungs, the most obvious question of them all – Why. Has. Melania. Not. Divorced. Him?

Why has Mrs Trump stayed in what sounds like a joyless, desiccated union? Why is she still officially with a man she “f***ing hates”?

Why has Mrs Trump stayed in what sounds like a joyless, desiccated union? Picture: AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

Because if it’s not love keeping Mrs Trump in the marriage, then we can only draw one conclusion: That the former model might be as opportunistic and self-serving as the bloke she married who rage-tweets from the toilet.

Might it turn out that, all along, Mrs Trump might be as morally lacking as her husband? As willing to squeeze every last drop of power and personal benefit out of public office as her spouse?

Maybe the evidence has been there all along.

Because time and time and time again, Melania has stayed. In 2006, after Mr Trump slept with porn star Stormy Daniels when he and Melania’s son Barron was four months old, she

was, according to The New York Times, “furious”. She stayed.

When, in October 2016, the Access Hollywood tape was released of Mr Trump boasting about “grabbing” women “by the p***y”, Mrs Trump “was not very happy”, the Times reported. Still, she stayed.

Melania stayed despite the Stormy Daniels affair. Picture: Peacock

When 27 women accused Mr Trump of sexual assault and sexual harassment over the years. When a New York civil court judge ruled that Mr Trump had raped writer E. Jean Carroll. When Mr Trump was criminally convicted for paying off Stormy.

Stayed, stayed, stayed.

Does anyone really, credibly think it’s deep-seated loyalty or some unswerving, dogged belief in her marriage vows that keeps Mrs Trump in what looks like a wasteland of an emotionally bereft union?

Nor could it be some concern about this political future. Republicans and conservatives have merrily lined up behind Mr Trump, despite him being famous for having the family values and marital success record of Henry VIII.

(Even if Mrs Trump were to divorce the president, I reckon there is a strong case that he would only enjoy a bump in the polls and could sell himself as a victim, a brave man willing to sacrifice his days crowding the Mar-a-lago omelette station to save his country).

Mr Wolff claims Melania ‘f***ing hates’ her husband. Picture: Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images

The only logical read here is that Mrs Trump stays for calculated reasons. Rich, rich, rich reasons.

Let’s talk about some pretty grubby lucre.

In January, Mr Trump launched a meme coin, amid an outcry.

Famed investor Ari Paul said the $Trump coin was “fleecing people for billions”; one-time Trump spokesman Anthony Scaramucci called it “corruption” and Cornell economics professor Eswar Prasad talked about “Trump’s grifting tendencies”.

Also in January, Mrs Trump launched her own meme coin called $MELANIA which, at its peak, had a market capitalisation of $7.8 billion.

Given that the First Lady had reserved, according to New York Magazine, 35 per cent of the total number of coins in circulation, she was suddenly a paper billionaire. (It’s since lost at least 90 per cent of its value).

Melania with her son Barron Trump at the inauguration. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson – Pool/Getty Images

Or to put it another way, Mrs Trump is on the same path as Mr Trump (who also launched a meme coin), and the whole First Family are squeezing and milking every benefit and every penny they can out of the anger and disenfranchisement that swept the President into office for a second time.

Added to the mystery of Mrs Trump’s wealth is that last year, Page Six reported that she had “quietly” renegotiated her prenup – for the third time.

If Mr Wolff’s bombshell “f***ing hates” line is on the money, pun obviously intended, then that makes Mrs Trump a wholly willing player in Trump Two.

Mr and Mrs Trump might be made for one another. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

I think I’ve changed my mind, actually.

Mr and Mrs Trump might be made for one another.

They both seem fundamentally superficial, are driven by a grasping, ever-parched thirst for personal gain, and they have both taken the norms attached with public office and ground them into the heavy pile carpet of the West and East Wings.

Maybe the Trumps and their his and hers meme coins and separate Trump Tower apartments are the perfect couple – locked in marriage that is happily never after.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as New book reveals bombshell claim about Donald and Melania Trump’s marriage