‘Would not sit next to him’: Clue Melania wants nothing to do with Donald Trump

The First Lady has finally reappeared after a strange absence, as fresh details about the Trumps’ very odd marriage come out.

OPINION

In 2005, days before real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump wed Slovenian model Melania Knauss, he predicted their marriage would “be very successful”.

Now 20 years, two presidencies, one son and a porn star trial later, would he still say the same thing?

The clues about how Mrs Trump, a woman of few words and fewer facial expressions, really feels about her Presidential husband are clear in new photos of her.

Diehard Mills & Boon fans, look away now.

At this week’s annual White House Governors’ Dinner, the Trumps arrived holding hands but looking as glum as if they were going to a prisoner exchange in the DMZ or being forced to sit through another one of Jared Kushner’s slam poetry sessions.

MORE:Melania Trump makes huge White House call

But it’s not just what the pictured showed, but the fact they were taken at all – it was the first time that Mrs Trump had turned up in Washington for a month. It immediately made news that the First Lady had attended an event at what is ostensibly her own house.

The 53-year-old’s re-emergence only highlights the fact that since late January, she has been absent from the capital, missing four major White House visits from foreign leaders.

The duo looked pained at the dinner. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

Trying … to … smile. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

MORE:Melania Trump slams Obama’s White House act

By contrast, at this point in the first administration in 2017, she had attended a number of high-profile meetings and bill signings and smiled a record 1.75 times.

At this week’s dinner, if Mrs Trump’s Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo seemed to melt into the sea of straining cummerbunds, if she had failed to haul out the appropriate tonnage of sequins to wow that room full of Republican WAGs, we should cut her some slack.

A series of new revelations have made it painfully clear that Mrs Trump has no interest in living, day-to-day, anywhere near the Commander in Chief.

In 2017, Melania showed she can smile. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

This week, the first extracts from Michael Wolff’s All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America were published by the Daily Beast and they claimed that the First Lady “f***ing hates” her tangerine scream dream of a husband, according to a “Mar-a-Lago patio confidant” of the president and his family.

Look – we can even see her teeth. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

How much distance does the former FHM model keep between herself and Mr Trump?

According to Wolff, during last year’s campaign his own staff “didn’t even know where Melania lived”.

Wolff went further when appearing on the Beast podcast, saying “She doesn’t live with him. They spend very little time together”. He says a source described their odd arrangement: “Whenever she was at the White House or at Mar-a-lago it’s like she’s a guest. She basically lives in Trump Tower now”.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump spent the first four weekends of his presidency in Florida.

Clues as to how frosty relations are between Mr and Mrs Trump were already appearing during the campaign last year. As Wolff points out, she was totally absent from the trail for 18 months and did not once make an appearance in supportive wife mode during his six-week criminal trial for paying off a porn star last year.

Where was Melania during her husband’s criminal trial? Picture: Justin Lane/POOL/AFP

Then, when it came time for the biggest moment of them all, the Republican National Convention, Mrs Trump, per Wolff, “would not sit next to him … Her one appearance on the last day was contingent on him not being in the VIP box”.

The duo at the Republican National Convention. Picture: Andrew Caballer-Reynolds/AFP

So what is Mrs Trump actually doing with her days, you might well ask?

Making her very own fortune without anyone paying her much attention, for one thing.

It was announced late last year that Amazon is making a doco about Mrs Trump and according to Wolff, company founder Jeff Bezos is “paying her millions upon millions of dollars to do this”.

The project is being directed by renowned author Brett Ratner, he of Rush Hour. When the Trumps did an Air Force One drive-by to visit California after January’s devastating fires, CNN reports that Mr Ratner was on board, filming away.

Wolff told the Beast’s podcast that the project is “totally peculiar in every respect” and quite simply, it’s “a pay-off”.

Jeff Bezos is paying millions upon millions of dollars to make a documentary about Melania. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

There is also however much Mrs Trump might have pocketed from the launch of her meme coin last month, which at its peak, was worth more than $3 billion, though its price has since crashed more than 90 per cent.

(To mark their 20th anniversary on January 22, Mr Trump re-posted a Truth Social post that peddled his wife’s meme coin. Aww shucks, what a romantic).

Per Wolff, this is at least something the Trumps have in common, saying “they are matched in their particular opportunism”.

The pair in 1999.

They were also snapped in 2004.

So too Mrs Trump has found the time to put out a new official portrait which makes her look like a Palms Casino croupier coming off a long shift.

She also managed to squeeze in a photo shoot with Hello! magazine, a title renowned for its insightful political reporting and at-home features with the lesser members of Atomic Kitten.

In January, the 53-year-old said of her plans, “my first priority is, you know, to be a mum”, which makes perfect sense given the Trumps’ son Barron is now a student at New York University. What college kid doesn’t want their mother hanging around and checking the Secret Service has remembered to pack his peeled grapes for little lunch?

Maybe, after two decades together, success is in the eye of the beholder – or the victorious signatory on the prenup. Mrs Trump, according to Page Six, has negotiated their “marital agreement” paperwork three times.

Be better and better, I suppose.

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