The second coming of America’s first lady is upon us. Melania – no surname necessary – is ready for her close-up. From Queen of Mar-a-Lago to Real Housewife of Washington DC, the cameras will be filming every moment of her return to the White House for Amazon’s exclusive, behind-the-scenes documentary.This weekend will be a whirlwind of parties, followed by the swearing-in of her husband at the Capitol and a round of inaugural balls on Monday. The documentary will show Melania packing her bags in Florida, choosing her outfits, appointing staff, preparing for the ceremony and re-entering her old White House living quarters, which she intends to refurbish (or fumigate?) after the Biden interlude.
The film will present Melania as she wishes to be seen: beautiful, elegant, poised, with the best tweakments money can buy. “I feel I was always me the first time as well,” Melania told Fox News in an interview this week, but she is now more confident. “The difference is I know where I’ll be going. I know the rooms where we’ll be living.” She added, “I just feel that people didn’t accept me, they didn’t understand me maybe, they way they do now…. I’m standing on my own two feet.”
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, will be MVP (most valued person) on the dais at the inauguration along with rival tech titans Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Bezos’s streaming platform has stumped up $40m (£32.8m) for the rights to Melania’s story, all carefully curated by the first lady herself.
This has been ridiculed as a kowtow to Donald Trump, but it’s not so different to the $100m (£82m) paid by Netflix to Prince Harry and Meghan or the alleged $65m (£53m) publishing deal for the Obamas’ memoirs. The fact is, Melania is catnip viewing for millions of Americans, who admire her glamour and fortitude.
Her slim memoir, Melania, published last autumn, was a bit of a dud compared to Michelle Obama’s 17 million global sales, but for Melania, it was a triumph. “The book was such a success, my fans would love to hear more,” she purred. “My life is incredible.” It is hard to disagree. Melania is the most successful, upwardly mobile woman in America.
The girl from communist Slovenia used to wear her designer mother’s creations on the catwalk before moving to Italy and the US as a young fashion model. After meeting the twice-married Trump at the KitKat club in New York, she never looked back. “Donald and I share an appreciation of the finer things in life,” she writes in her memoir.
They don’t see eye to eye on everything. Melania, 54, has promised to revive her anti-bullying campaign “Be Best” as first lady and wants social media platforms to do more to protect children’s mental health. During the election campaign, she supported abortion rights.
“I don’t always agree [with] what my husband is doing or saying and that’s ok,” she said. “I give him my advice and sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t.”
The author Michael Wolff has claimed Melania often stayed with her parents rather than at the White House during Trump’s first term. With son Barron, 18, at New York University, there has been speculation she will decamp to Trump Tower at the earliest opportunity. However, she told Fox News she would live (mostly) in Washington.
“When I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach,” she said. “But my first priority is to be a mum, to be a first lady, to be a wife. And once we are in on January 20, you serve the country.”
Melania’s marriage to Trump has lasted 20 years, even if there have been a few thorns along the way. She never appeared in court to hear allegations that her husband slept with adult film star Stormy Daniels soon after she gave birth to Barron or that Trump sexually assaulted agony aunt E Jean Carroll (both of which he denies).
But Melania has a gift for overlooking such trifles. The director of her Amazon documentary is Brett Ratner, the maker of X-Men: the Last Stand and the Rush Hour films, who was shunned by Hollywood at the height of the Me Too movement after several women alleged sexual misconduct (he denies the allegations and no charges were brought).
Melania was similarly unruffled by the violence at the Capitol on 6 January, 2021. She claimed in her memoir she was too busy overseeing archivists at the White House that day to know what was happening or she would have condemned it. Her former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, flatly denied this, saying, “It’s clear she chose to stay quiet.”
In 2005 Melania featured on the cover of Vogue as “Donald Trump’s new bride” in a Christian Dior wedding dress, but was snubbed as first lady during the first Trump presidency. That stung, especially as Jill Biden, 73, was photographed twice – most recently, with horrible timing, just as her husband was being forced out of the 2024 race.
Trump is speaking the language of Putin and Xi with his Greenland comments
Read MoreMy guess is editor-in-chief Anna Wintour – like many Trump critics – will have to eat humble pie and beg to have Melania back on the cover. She is the most photogenic first lady since Jackie Kennedy (her style icon). Everyone is waiting to see whether Melania can top the powder blue Ralph Lauren dress she wore to Trump’s first inauguration.
Melania is also likely to be invited back to the Met Gala, New York’s fashion event of the year (Barron, too, now he’s old enough). Trump proposed to her there in 2004, but was banned by Wintour from attending when he became president. If Wintour continues to resist the Trump family charm, her own days as Queen of Conde Nast may be numbered.
Like her husband, Melania is quick to take umbrage. In a swipe at the Obamas, Melania complained on Fox News that their administration withheld information from them in 2016. “It’s [a] very different transition second time around,” she said.
That’s rich, given that both Trumps refused to attend Biden’s inauguration and Melania recently turned down Jill Biden’s traditional first lady invitation to tea. But like the message on the jacket she wore in 2018 to visit immigrant children on the US border, Melania’s usual riposte to criticism is, “I really don’t care, do U?”.
Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Centre
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Melania 2.0 will be the star of the Trump presidency )
Also on site :
- What to know about the trial of an ex-Michigan cop charged in the killing of a Black motorist
- Trump sees no red line that would change tariff policy - The Atlantic
- Could 100 Men Really Take on One Gorilla and Win? We Asked ChatGPT