A little over 12 years ago, Melania Trump logged on to Twitter, uploaded a picture of a cheery-looking beluga whale, and added the caption, “What is she thinking?” The tweet was classic Melania, which is to say that it was cryptic, minimalist, and only lightly in focus. Unlike her husband, Melania Trump undershares on social media—if she isn’t there to hawk baffling NFT collectibles or patriotic Christmas ornaments, she doesn’t typically have much to say. But over the past few weeks, as she’s soft-launched her new memoir, Melania has been posting a series of short videos, each one its own inscrutable puzzle. Mistily obscured through what seems to be a Vaseline-smeared camera lens, she gives brief statements on subjects including cancel culture, her immediate attraction to “Donald,” and her apparent belief in a woman’s right to choose. Her head is stiffly tilted, her gaze steadfast. As she talks, a string section in the background pulses with momentum, as though these clips are actually trailers for the climactic final season of a show called America!
What is she thinking? First ladies, by the cursed nature of the role, are supposed to humanize and soften the jagged, ugly edge of power. The job is to be maternal, quietly decorative, fascinating but not frivolous, busy but not bold. In some ways, Melania Trump—elegant, enigmatic, and apparently unambitious—arrived in Washington better suited to the office than any other presidential spouse in recent memory. In reality, she ended up feeling like a void—a literal absence from the White House for the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency—that left so much room for projection. When she seemed to glower at her husband’s back on Inauguration Day, some decided that she was desperate for an exit, prompting the #FreeMelania hashtag. When she wore a vibrant-pink pussy-bow blouse to a presidential debate mere days after the Access Hollywood tape leaked, the garment was interpreted by some as a statement of solidarity with women, and by others as a defiant middle finger to his critics. Most notoriously, during the months in 2018 when the Trump administration removed more than 5,000 babies and children from their parents at the U.S. border, Melania wore a jacket emblazoned with the words I really don’t care, do u? on the plane to visit some of those children, the discourse over which rivaled the scrutiny of one of the cruelest American policies of the modern era.
Would-be Melaniaologists have had mere scraps to work with over the years, which is why the announcement of her memoir in July was a surprise. Like the British Royal Family, the former first lady prefers to never complain, never explain, and instead glide imposingly through crisis, a swan in a swamp. Does she care? Having read the roughly 200 pages of Melania that aren’t given over to photos, I think I can say that she does not. In fact, she appears to have turned not caring into its own superpower, focusing rigidly on who or what pleases her (beauty; her son, Barron; blockchain ventures) and filtering out virtually everything else. The book contains no mention of Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, the Access Hollywood tape, E. Jean Carroll, the felony conviction of her husband for falsifying business records. Trump’s first impeachment gets about one page, compared with about four devoted to Melania’s failed caviar-based skin-care brand from 2013. Her stepchildren merit just one direct mention. If the book contains any insight into Melania, it’s in how meticulously she seems to have curated a reality for herself that’s free from trouble, anxiety, or introspection. She’s untouchable, insulated from care and responsibility by her extremely selective focus and distractingly ornamental prose.
So why write a book at all? My guess would be: As someone who seems to so dislike other people profiting from her name that—according to the former CNN journalist Kate Bennett’s book, Free, Melania—souvenirs sold in her hometown are reportedly branded only with M or first lady to deter lawsuits, she wanted her own monetized effort on shelves next to the unauthorized biographies and torrid tell-alls. “As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation,” she writes in the brief introduction, “I feel a responsibility to set the record straight and to provide the actual account of my experiences.” What follows is—with the exception of her writing on abortion rights—highly predictable, and as airbrushed as a Vogue cover. Her memories of Election Night 2016 are of her husband emerging as “a unifying leader … [who] recognized the need for healing and unity in America.” Her childhood in Slovenia is idyllic, with two loving parents, a private nanny who bakes cakes frosted with “handmade sugar flowers,” and “cherished” family holidays on the Dalmatian coast. The prose is lavish by way of LinkedIn: Melania’s grandfather, a shoemaker and an onion farmer, “wasted no time in pursuing his passion for agriculture”; her mother, a patternmaker in a children’s-clothing factory, “was the artisan behind the scenes … thriving in the world of fashion.”
The Trumpian embellishment of Melania’s life prior to her husband’s election can feel deadening to read; if everything is unique and remarkable and thrilling, nothing is. Her time as a model, a fairly uneventful career whose highlight before she met Trump was a single Camel ad, is reinvented as a plucky girl’s triumph, a “testament to my firm determination, courage, and resilience.” In her first meeting with Trump, she’s struck by his “polished business look, witty banter, and obvious determination.” She feels immediately “as if our souls had known each other for a very long time”; pragmatically, she ignores the reality of his messy second divorce, “choosing instead to enjoy his company.” Their early commitment to each other is based on their shared preference for “a healthy life, evident in our abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.” (Big Macs and Coca-Cola would like a word.) When the tabloids label her a “gold digger,” she insists that she’d already “earned my fortune” but decides that “to engage in such matters—to dignify each and every untruth—would be squandering my time and energy.”
What is fascinating about the book—if you can bear being beaten over the head with adjectives—is how early on Melania learns that the art of selective attention will set her free. She opts to not concern herself with Trump’s chaotic romantic history, to not trouble herself with what people say about her. “While I may not agree with every decision or choice expressed by Donald’s grown children, nor do I align with all of Donald’s decisions, I acknowledge that differing viewpoints are a natural aspect of human relationships,” she writes. “Rather than imposing my views or critiquing others, I have aimed to be a steady presence—someone they can rely on.” Over time, as the stakes rise, this aversion to conflict starts to feel pathological. When the crisis at the border becomes global news, with shocking reports of hysterical children being snatched from their families, Melania describes being “blindsided” and “completely unaware of the policy.” On January 6, 2021, as protestors storm the Capitol, Melania is busy “taking archival photographs” for a record of White House renovations. She’s perplexed, then, when her press secretary at the time, Stephanie Grisham, asks her by text message if she wants to “denounce the violence.” (As Grisham reminded us at the Democratic National Convention this year, Melania’s reply was just one word: “No.”) When, Melania thinks, “had I ever condoned violence?”
The only thing that really seems to aggravate Melania is when her willful ignorance is disrupted in ways she can’t dismiss—which is perhaps why almost all of her enmity here is directed at the media. When it’s revealed that sections of her speech supporting her husband at the 2016 Republican National Convention were near-identical to sections from a speech by Michelle Obama, she’s furious that “my words, which articulated a hopeful vision for the nation, were overshadowed by a barrage of personal attacks.” As her I really don’t care jacket—a dig at the media, she writes—becomes a scandal, she’s enraged at how “the media’s distorted reporting on the jacket overshadowed the importance of the children,” as though the jacket had simply fallen on her shoulders by accident, its message inscribed by invisible fairies.
This adamant refusal to engage with anything she doesn’t want to think about does become harder and harder to maintain. When Melania writes of her steadfast, lifelong belief that women should “have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the flashing neon elephant in the room is her own husband, his three Supreme Court appointments, and his successful pitch to evangelicals that he would be America’s most pro-life president. After Melania’s home at Mar-a-Lago is raided during the FBI’s investigation over Trump’s alleged misuse of classified documents, she’s appalled that the FBI goes through her and Barron’s bedrooms, even though, she insists, “I had no confidential documents in my possession, no involvement with the West Wing.” Americans, she emphasizes, “need to understand the dangers posed by a federal government that feels entitled to invade our homes and our lives.” What’s missing is any acknowledgement of the approximately 13,000 documents the government found at Mar-a-Lago, more than 100 of which were classified and some of which related to information about national defense. (It’s much easier to call something a “witch hunt” if you mulishly ignore the cauldron, spellbook, and broomstick in your own basement.)
But fact-checking her memoir is, in some ways, beside the point, given how impervious Melania and her husband seem to be to the concept of “truth.” Both understand how crucial attention can be, whether you’re drawing it to yourself or focusing so intently on some things that you can’t be criticized for all the other things you’ve missed. As I read other books about Melania Trump over the past week, I thought it seems likely that she is, in private, a gracious and fun woman who genuinely loves children, finds great pleasure in her own self-presentation, and cares not one single degree about what people think of her. In that sense, she is truly free, liberated from the pains of empathy and anxiety that plague the rest of us. She really doesn’t care, and if we do, that’s our problem.
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