Melania’s back, like she’d never been away

Melania Trump’s first interview in two years revealed why the Republicans are so desperate for her to hit the campaign trail with her husband | WATCH

Melania Trump has given her first interview in two years. Picture: AFP

A lot has changed since Melania Trump’s last interview two years ago; even more since the interviews she gave in 2018 and 2016.

Presidents have risen and fallen, armies have marched into war, an insurrection has hit the Capitol and a pandemic has swept the planet, but one thing has remained exactly the same: Melania.

As the former – and potentially next – first lady sat down for an interview with Ainsley Earhardt on Fox & Friends to mark the release of her new memoir, I blinked hard. Her hair, is it fixed? For ever? I squinted at her smokey black eyeshadow. It was the same as it was in all the other interviews. Identical. It was like she was beaming in from 2022. Or 2018. Or 2016.

Time concertinaed, right there at my kitchen table. “Oh God,” I thought. “Where am I? What year is it? What is time and does it pass all at once or never at all? Is Melania existing in the same time as the rest of us or does she just land in front of us periodically, sent down from Trump Tower like a Slavic spaceship with five-inch stilettos instead of landing gear?”

Melania, 54, has been almost entirely absent from the spotlight this year but here she was in a recorded interview for breakfast television.

Excerpts were drip fed to viewers across three hours. She sat unmoving, legs crossed and hands folded on top with conscientious grace, speaking her truth (available to purchase in book form on October 8, $250 collector’s edition).

Everything was gentle. She nodded her head slowly, blinked slowly, a lovely lady-princess perched in a window, not making any sudden movements.

Melania spoke about her first date with Donald Trump, their 18-year-old son Barron (a very good boy) and her modelling career. “Nothing prepared me more for being first lady in front of the world than the fashion industry,” she smiled, a warrior hardened in Manhattan’s chiffon trenches. “It’s glamorous but it’s tough.”

Melania Trump during the TV interview

You can see why the Republicans are so desperate for Melania to hit the campaign trail with her husband. She spoke sincerely and fluently, particularly on the state of the country, on her late mother and on the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

She showed a depth of feeling and fear for her fighter husband too. In fact, there’s a chance, I think, that seeing him bloodied and brave, hand in the air having just survived a bullet, that maybe, just maybe, she had thought the “commander in chief” was kind of hot too.

Melania has always framed herself within motherhood and wifedom. At one point we were shown a photograph from the book of Melania somewhere up high in a skyscraper, sitting at a desk scattered artfully with papers, Louboutins on, hair coiffured and smiling gently, white shirt buttoned down nearly to her navel, a young Barron at her feet driving a miniature red Mercedes around a room where everything that could have been gilded was.

It was as if AI had been asked to draw a scene of the inside of the Trump Universe. Earhardt said: “I looked at this picture and thought, this is a working mum’s life. We can all relate to this.”

Ten-minute clips were interspersed with commentary from the four Fox News anchors who simply adored her. “You see the way she holds herself?” they gushed. “She is very polished, very elegant.” “She’s fascination, she’s beautiful, she’s poised.” It was like listening to a beauty pageant panel.

It was over too soon, the interview released in preparation for the book launch, so Melania can be beamed back up to Trump Tower, rigid as a rake, where she does something or other, until she is presented to the American public all over again, the same.

The Times