November 28, 2017
The latest Melania profile, written by Sara Ellison and published in Vanity Fair, is a bust for anyone who’s been paying attention, without much new or notable in its glossy 4,000+ words. You can read the full article here, and what follows are the ten parts I highlighted.
She made him do it
It was in part Melania’s impatience with her husband’s dithering that helped push Trump to declare his candidacy. “She knew it was in his blood,” [Roger] Stone said. “He always wanted to run. She is the one who pushed him to run just by saying run or do not run. I don’t think she was ever too crazy about it.” She knew her husband wanted to run for president. And she knew that, if he didn’t, he was likely to be knocking around their gilded triplex in Trump Tower, muttering about how he should have done so. “She said, ‘It’s not my thing. It’s Donald’s thing,’ ” according to Stone. “And I think she understood he was going to be unhappy if he didn’t run.”
Winner’s remorse
“This isn’t something she wanted and it isn’t something he ever thought he’d win,” one longtime friend of the Trumps’ told me. “She didn’t want this come hell or high water. I don’t think she thought it was going to happen.
Separate lives
Melania’s friends are divided when it comes to how she feels about her husband. One told me that it is “old news” that she and her husband live essentially separate lives.
And how does he feel about her? The time the couple spends apart may be one reason for Donald Trump’s poor behavior. “The one who has the most control over Donald is Melania, 100 percent,” says Thomas Barrack Jr., one of Trump’s oldest friends. “And he listens to her and adores her.”
Home alone
The aide also told me that since Melania moved to D.C. her “focus” has been on Barron’s school. “I think it would be better for [Trump] if she were around more,” the former aide said. But an East Wing aide told me that, aside from her son’s school events, Melania does not spend much time away from the White House.
An empty shell
Her East Wing remains sparsely inhabited.
The rich are different
Upstairs is the First Lady’s office as well as offices for her chief of staff and for the calligraphers who handle invitations that come from the First Lady’s office.
Secrets and lies
But despite her proximity to the public, much of Melania Trump’s life has remained in the shadows. She is the keeper of many of her husband’s secrets, and one can imagine that what binds the two of them together is that he may very well be the keeper of some of hers.
Magazine covers
Some of her philanthropic activities from her life in New York (Boys’ Club of New York, the American Red Cross, Love Our Children USA, the American Heart Association) are outlined in her White House biography. The list of them on the White House Web page comes after a list of her magazine-modeling covers.
Potica
…it was Melania who received the warmest reception from Pope Francis, whom Donald Trump has called “disgraceful.” Francis had only kind words for Melania. He asked her if she fed Trump potica, a Slovenian nut bread—possibly referring to Trump’s widening girth. “He was very friendly with her and not with the rest of the family,” someone briefed on the trip told me.
Relative popularity
For Melania, being more popular than her husband is an increasingly easy task.
If you want read more, click here for the full text on Vanity Fair, while the video below is an uncensored and often offensive look at Melania in Ljubljana and Sevnica, including a sequence with her Slovenian lawyer, Nataša Pirc Musar, which may explain why we're not doing any investigations in this area.
