Melania Trump and her quiet First Lady rebellion

MELANIA Trump is expected to be adoring of her husband. But her silence on defending the President says more than words.

MELANIA Trump defended her husband during the election campaign and stood proudly by his side during his inauguration.

But in recent times, the 47-year-old First Lady has been anything but a public defender, conspicuously absent from several high-profile events following allegations her husband had an affair with a porn star.

However, the First Lady is poised to resurface, with the White House tentatively confirming she will attend Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, traditionally the biggest appearance of the year for a president’s wife.

Author and CNN contributor Kate Andersen Brower writes in The New York Times that while First Ladies are “expected to accept their husband’s infidelities and cruelty and to remain their strongest champions”, Mrs Trump’s approach is different.

Anderson writes that while the US President spent his first anniversary blasting Democrats for the government shutdown, his wife marked the occasion by tweeting a single photo of herself on Inauguration Day on the arm of a Marine without even mentioning the President’s name.

Mrs Trump then cancelled her plans to join her husband at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in a move which spoke volumes.

“Mrs Trump may end up doing more than any of her predecessors to up-end our expectations of the slavish devotion a first lady must display toward her husband,” the article says.

First Lady Melania Trump’s office is fed up with speculation about marital strife in the White House with spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham blasting “flat-out false reporting” about her. Picture: Carolyn Kaster/AP

She goes on to write that Mrs Trump is a reluctant First Lady and was even before the inauguration.

“Her apparent antipathy toward the job has made her more willing to ignore the rules and traditions that govern it. This quiet rebellion started with her decision not to move into the White House until five months after her husband took office.”

FIRST LADY FLOURISHES

In May, during an overseas trip for the G7 summit, the world began to see a little more of the Slovenian beauty who became Mr Trump’s third wife and mother to his fifth child, Barron.

US broadcaster CNN said the trip was “especially telling” about Melania Trump who had her own coming out party, while her husband wasn’t as well received at the summit.

Her influence on her husband is said to be profound and she is apparently “the best hope for White House advisers who are trying to convince President Donald Trump to tweet less”.

“Often cast as a reluctant First Lady, [Melania] emerged from her husband’s long shadow and strode onto the world stage,” wrote The Telegraph.

“It finally gave an inquisitive American public a taste of what kind of First Lady she will be, where her priorities will lie, and also the best peek yet into the internal dynamic of the Trump marriage.”

Mrs Trump didn’t move into the White House until five months into her husband’s presidency. Picture: Nicholas Kamm/AFP

RELUCTANT FIRST LADY

According to Fire & Fury: Inside The Trump White House by Michael Wolff, Mrs Trump cried when Mr Trump won the election.

It reveals no one in the Trump campaign thought he would win the presidency and his victory was enough to move Melania Trump to tears.

“Shortly after 8pm on election night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy,” Wolff writes.

However the First Lady’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, denied this happened, and said she has been nothing but supportive of her husband.

“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section,” she said in a statement.

“Mrs Trump supported her husband’s decision to run for President and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did.”

Mrs Trump reportedly cried when her husband won the US election, author Michael Wolff claims. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

MELANIA’S FURY

Mrs Trump’s decision not to follow her husband to the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, came amid claims she was “hit hard” by allegations he had an affair with a porn star.

She reportedly stayed at a Washington DC hotel for days before escaping to Florida for 28 hours amid reports of her husband’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.

According to The Sun the First Lady was left “humiliated” and has spent “three to four days a week away from the White House”.

She is also said to have flown to Mar-a-Lago in Florida before reportedly returning as her husband arrived home from Davos.

Mr Trump was a private citizen when the 2006 sexual encounter with adult film actor Stormy Daniels was alleged to have taken place. Picture: Ethan Miller/AFP/Getty Images

Stormy Daniels, whose real is name Stephanie Clifford, was allegedly paid $160,000 in hush money over her alleged 2006 affair with Donald Trump shortly after his marriage to Melania and the birth of Barron.

Ms Grisham, confirmed to CNN that the First Lady’s decision to miss the trip was based on “scheduling and logistic issues”.

She took to Twitter last week to blast “flat-out false reporting” about the First Lady that has emerged in recent days. “BREAKING,” she wrote. “The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into ‘main stream media’ reporting.” Grisham added that Mrs Trump is focused on her family and role as First Lady, “not the unrealistic scenarios being peddled daily by the fake news”.

— With wires