Where has Melania Trump been? Mother, loner and the Republicans’ new ‘Jackie O’
Donald Trump’s wife is a full-time mother to Barron and has hardly said a word in the campaign. Strategists hope Mr and Mrs Vance will change that.
There was a 5ft 11 (abut 180cm) hole, with room for killer heels, in much of the Republican national convention last week. America’s reddest-blooded right-wingers were left waiting for the one person who could fill it: the former first lady, Melania Trump.
On Thursday at 9pm, she appeared, wearing a bright red skirt suit, gliding through the Milwaukee crowds to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, hair billowing, a Disney fantasy of femininity and grace.
At the end of a high-octane week, this was a high point. The crowd were full of adrenaline not only due to the shooting of Donald Trump on Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania, but also after Melania’s reaction to it, many followers depicting her as a composed, maternal figure, their “Jackie O” watching over the party from afar.
“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realised my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” she wrote in a statement on Sunday.
It seems the less the 54-year-old appears, the more people anticipate her arrival. This year she has formally appeared with Trump, 78, just twice and hosted two fundraisers – neither of which required her to leave the house. Last week she opted out of giving a speech at the convention, bucking first-lady tradition and maintaining her run of not having uttered a single word in the presidential race.
What goes on behind the dark shades? People who know her say that her priority is to be a traditional, full-time mother to 18-year-old Barron and a fierce, high-society wife to Donald. Team Trump is desperate to get her out there, ideally with the campaign’s second lady, Usha Vance. And will she? Well, there’s certainly no point in trying to make her.
“She is raising their beautiful, handsome, super-smart son, Barron, and that’s a full-time job,” said Bill White, a Republican donor and longtime friend. “It is a great focus of hers.”
She is so protective of her son, in fact, that it was reported last week that she was renegotiating her prenuptial agreement in preparation for a second Trump term, plumping up the trust for her 6ft 9in (205cm) only child, with whom she is said to spend most of her time and who is now joining his father in public appearances. In their previous four years in the White House, Melania ensured that he had a football goal in the rose garden.
White was one of the organisers of fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans, the group for LGBT conservatives favoured by Melania.
The first was in March in the tea room of Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ Florida home, attended by the reality TV star Caitlin Jenner and talk show host Dr Oz. The second event was held this month in her apartment at Trump Tower, decorated in gold leaf, family photos hanging on the walls and overlooking the Manhattan skyline.
According to White, the group raised about $US2 million ($3m) between about 20 guests.
“That is the format that she enjoys: a small, intimate gathering,” he said.
“The judiciousness of her participation is what makes doing an event with her very special. There’s a huge level of interest when she does do something. I sent a few texts and the tickets [$US100,000] are gone in minutes.”
She chose the Log Cabin group because of her close friendship with one of their ambassadors, Richard Grenell, who briefly served in Trump’s White House.
“And because of her life experience, with her friends, with people in her life, she’s very supportive of the gay community,” White said.
It is also politically savvy. “There’s going to be a focus on suburban women in the swing states who might have siblings or children who are gay. This is a most important voting block for former president Trump and naturally a connection to Mrs Trump.”
The Sunday Times understands Melania also contributed to her husband’s decision to choose JD Vance as his running mate after he and his wife, Usha, 38, were flown in to spend time with the family at Mar-a-Lago, dining, golfing and socialising, like a series of The Apprentice.
Vance met his lawyer wife at Yale Law School, the daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in San Diego. At college, then Cambridge University, it seems she moved in more liberal, left-leaning circles, registering as a Democrat in 2014, the year she married.
She seems less enthused about the vice-presidential candidacy. “I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now,” she said in an interview last month, mentioning their three children – Ewan, 7, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2. “But I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens.”
Now Vance is on the Trump ticket, Republicans are keen to see Usha and Melania on the campaign trail together.
“A Trump-Vance first and second lady tour [on the election campaign] could really do well winning over young women out there,” Brilyn Hollyhand, an author and chairman of the Republicans’ youth advisory council, said.
“That’s something being considered [by Trump’s team].” Either way, he said, Melania was planning to be seen more often in the coming months.
“She’s been saying that she’s ready and Saturday night’s assassination attempt has made her more ready … Everyone is saying she is our Jackie Kennedy.”
Melania, a former model who moved to the US from Slovenia, certainly sees herself in a similar mould, said Kate Andersen Brower, author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies, taking “more of a socialite’s approach” to being first lady. Brower added: “I don’t think she sees her role as political.”
There has also been seemingly no attempt by Trump’s team to soften Melania.
“She is very unknowable,” said Brower. Some of her actions remain baffling, such as wearing a coat reading, “I really don’t care, do you?” to a children’s shelter, or her 2016 speech to the Republican national convention which seemingly plagiarised Michelle Obama.
She is a different animal from the former president’s children, who appear dogged in their public defence of the patriarch.
Donald Trump Jr, 46, and his daughter, Kai, 17, made speeches at the convention, as did Eric Trump, 40, and his wife, Lara, 41.
“It would be the campaign’s dream if Melania went out,” Bennett said. “But she knows her limits and she is confident in them. So they have simply stopped asking because they know the answer would be ‘no’. Donald Trump knows that better than anybody.”
Political life came as a shock but Melania is no damsel in distress, trapped in a big house and a suffocating marriage, said Mary Jordan, author of The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.
“Melania does what Melania wants.” It’s that simple.
The Sunday Times
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