Melania Trump is the first lady who has seldom been there.
The wife of Republican presidential candidate and former chief executive Donald Trump walked directly into the fire of public scrutiny early, when her debut speech to the 2016 Republican National Convention drew immediate charges of plagiarism. Since then, it has been clear that she rejects the tradition-bound idea that participation is mandatory while married to a president of the United States. On stage during a rare appearance at Trump’s side during the RNC in July, Melania Trump showed affection to her husband and waved to the delegates — but said nothing.
She's speaking up now.
Weeks before the Nov. 5 presidential election, Melania Trump is releasing a series of videos ahead of her self-titled memoir that tick through her choice subjects — her nude photos, motherhood, the media.
The timing, too, is key. Until at least Election Day, Melania Trump is still a potential first lady. Beyond that, her marketability is in some way up to American voters as they choose between her husband and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“She is capitalizing on the time she has left before the election Her (market) value is gone if she is no longer a prospective first lady," said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump’s former friend and adviser, who supports Harris. "If Harris wins, I believe people will want to move on.”
And so Melania Trump's memoir will come out just weeks after two assassination attempts against her husband, whom she described in a July 14 statement as “the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times.”
Like her husband, Melania Trump, 54, has telegraphed from the very beginning of the family's political saga that she'll break norms without apology.
"I have my own mind,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2016. “I am my own person, and I think my husband likes that about me.”
Like anyone who releases a memoir, Melania Trump must care very much what people think about her. She begins her story with a grievance.
“As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation,” she says in the trailer for her memoir on her website. “I feel a responsibility to clarify the facts. I believe it is important to share my perspective,” which she calls “the truth.”
Other grievances follow against dramatic background music. In one, she asks why “the media has chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot," as classical art such as Michelangelo's “David” scroll across the screen to dramatic music. That's a reference to nude photos of her from modeling work in the 1990s (she was known then as Melania Knauss) that were publicly known during the 2016 campaign, partly in the context of the work visa she had.
In another, she takes aim at the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 in a search for classified documents the government says Trump illegally retained from his presidency and obstructed efforts to get them back. Trump has pleaded not guilty and a judge dismissed the case, a move that prosecutors are appealing. She said the FBI searched through her personal belongings and said the incident should serve as an unspecified “warning” to Americans.
“I never imagined my privacy would be invaded by the government here in America,” she says over sorrowful music.
Another video rebuts criticism from the Rose Garden incident of 2020, when the then-first lady renovated the iconic Kennedy-era gathering place near the Oval Office. Historians still grit their teeth over the redo, which they see as evidence of disrespect for the White House. To the contrary, she says of the Rose Garden in this video: “I felt a deep responsibility to respect tradition and to preserve its grandeur for future generations.”
Motherhood, she says in another video, brings her “immense fulfillment.”
Melania Trump is tracking her financial future, and Barron's.
Trump's financial report released in August shows that his spouse earned income that includes $330,000 from the sale of NFTs and $237,500 for a speech in April to the Log Cabin Republicans in Palm Beach, Florida.
Also, for months after her husband began his presidency, she stayed in New York. The official reason was to wait for Barron to finish the school year rather than uprooting him midterm. In fact, the delay was her effort to gain leverage to renegotiate the couple’s prenuptial agreement, according to Washington Post journalist Mary Jordan’s 2020 book, which the Trump White House denounced. Melania Trump wanted better terms for herself and for Barron.
She's publishing her books through Skyhorse Publishing — not Winning Team, which put out her husband’s three books since he left office.
Before deciding on Skyhorse, her representatives reached out to at least three major New York publishers who were unable to agree to terms on a deal, multiple publishing officials told The Associated Press. The officials were not authorized to discuss their interactions with Trump’s representatives and asked not to be identified. The officials all said that negotiations never advanced beyond general discussions and that Trump herself did not participate.
Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama were among previous first ladies who worked with major New York publishers and received multimillion-dollar advances. Trump’s decision to work with Skyhorse, where fellow authors include such controversial public figures as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Woody Allen, was not necessarily her first choice, publishing sources say.
A Skyhorse spokesperson, citing company policy, declined comment on the publisher’s negotiations with Trump. The Trump campaign did not return requests for comment.
There's a whole other history, of course, about Trump's two impeachments, criminal convictions, rape accusations and hush money scheme to prevent Melania Trump from finding out that he'd slept with porn actor Stormy Daniels. There's no sign that they'll be referenced even obliquely in his wife's memoir. The former president denies doing anything wrong.
Early on, Melania Trump was plenty familiar with her husband's personality, and she showed signs of how she'd handle the times when his bombast and misogyny went public. The release of the Access Hollywood recording of Trump boasting about grabbing women by their genitals is one such example. According to "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump,” Trump's campaign insisted that Melania stand by her husband at a press conference. Melania Trump watched the tape, and gave her answer.
“No,” she is quoted as saying, insisting instead on releasing a statement. It said that her husband's words had been “unacceptable and offensive” and urged voters to accept his apology, as she had.
She clearly sees herself as a participating member of the first ladies club, musing to Harper's Bazaar in 2016 that she admired Jackie Kennedy's elegance and appealing manner. She stands out among historians in less-than-flattering terms, and it's unclear how history will remember her.
Robert Watson, an expert on first ladies and a history professor at Lynn University in Florida, notes that Melania Trump's “unforced errors” during her husband's administration reflected poorly on it, including “wrecking the beloved White House Rose Garden" and wearing a jacket emblazoned on the back with the words, “I really don't care, do u” after a visit with young children separated from their parents at the U.S border with Mexico. Even her “Be Best” campaign, he said, doesn't stack up next to Lady Bird Johnson's conservation program, the Bush family's efforts to promote reading and Rosalynn Carter's drive on behalf of mental health.
“One of the cardinal rules for a first lady is to do no harm ... in this respect, Melania comes up short,” Watson said in an email. “She will not be remembered in a way that so many beloved first ladies have been remembered.”
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Kellman reported from London. Associated Press writers Rhonda Shafner and Hillel Italie contributed to this story from New York. Follow Kellman on X at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman