A month before the US presidential election, former First Lady Melania Trump’s memoir made headlines for her fervent support for abortion rights. But the enigmatic wife of the Republican billionaire does not say much more in this autobiography published Tuesday in the United States.
Already revealed last week by the British daily The Guardian, the extract in which the former Slovenian model vigorously defends this right remains the main revelation of the 182-page work simply entitled “Melania”.
“A woman’s fundamental right to individual freedom, to her own life, gives her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” writes the woman who was First Lady between 2017 and 2021. A position that stands out among the Trumpists: her husband has always congratulated himself on having appointed three conservative judges to the Supreme Court who dynamited federal protection of the right to abortion in 2022.
Since then, many conservative states in the South have severely restricted or even banned access to voluntary termination of pregnancy, which has become a hot topic in the presidential campaign. Ten states are organizing referendums on the issue in parallel with the presidential vote on November 5.
“Restricting a woman’s right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy amounts to denying her control over her own body,” insists Melania Trump. “This conviction has accompanied me throughout my adult life,” she assures.
“Interesting question”
A gesture of independence, even if it meant sowing confusion in her husband’s campaign, or a carefully controlled position taken to attenuate the feeling that the Republicans were opposing a right defended by the majority of Americans, these remarks were widely commented on and interpreted differently since their publication.
In full promotion, Melania Trump was the guest of Fox News on Tuesday, the favorite channel of conservatives. Would she have married Donald Trump if she knew he would become president? The former model does not respond. “That’s an interesting question,” she finally said after a moment of hesitation.
In the rest of the book, Melania Trump adopts a speech dear to American conservatives, accusing the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter of “inflammatory rhetoric” and deploring the “violent demonstrations” of 2020. An immense wave of protests then shook the country after the death of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white police officer.
Like her husband, she also does not concede, four years later, the victory of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, without any proof of electoral fraud.
The former First Lady prefers to describe the counting process as a “bazaar”, saying that “many Americans still have doubts”.
Donald Trump is indicted by federal courts and in the state of Georgia for trying to illegally overturn the results of this election.
“Difficulties encountered”
If she condemns the unprecedented violence of January 6, 2021, when thousands of supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington to prevent the certification of the results, Melania Trump kicks in: she was busy that day with renovation work on the White House.
Very discreet during her husband’s mandate and even more reserved since she left Washington, she does not mention any of the scandals that have splashed Donald Trump in recent years, such as the accusations of sexual assault made by at least twenty women, or the case of hidden payments to a former porn star which made him the first ex-president of the United States to be criminally convicted at the end of May.
Born in 1970 in what is now Slovenia, the former model arrived in the glitzy New York of the 1990s to continue her career. She is the third wife of Donald Trump, with whom she had a son, Barron.
“My personal experience of the ordeal of the immigration process has opened my eyes to the difficulties faced by all those who wish to become American citizens,” she says, as her husband promises to deport migrants en masse and multiplies diatribes against them that are as virulent as they are false.
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