why she also wants to win

A fascinating couple

The Melania-Donald couple has fascinated America for more than twenty-five years. However, these two almost did not meet, she reveals in “Melania”, her memoirs published in the United States at the beginning of October, not translated into French. It was September 1998. Melania was then living in New York, in a small two-room apartment on 30th Street, in eastern Manhattan, on the second floor of an old building, with a view of a large tree planted in the service yard.

“My life was not perfect,” she wrote. A friend suggests that she spend the next day at the Kit Kat Club, a fashionable nightclub, which no longer exists. The model balks: returning from a trip to Paris, she is jetlagged. She ends up being convinced and opens, without suspecting it, a new chapter in her life. In the club, a man approaches her and says: “Hi, I’m Donald Trump. » She has heard this name before, but she knows nothing more about him. He takes a seat next to her. The flow passes: “He had charm, seemed relaxed, and, above all, listened to me with intensity, I had the impression of being the center of the world,” she writes.

She refuses to give him her phone number because he is accompanied by a pretty blonde, but promises to call him if he gives her his. Trump signals his bodyguard to give him his business card, before disappearing. She lets a few days pass and then ends up dialing his number. “Why didn't you call me sooner?” » he complains. He invites her to lunch. There they are both in his black Mercedes, him at the wheel, on the way to his Bedford mansion, “which looks like a French castle”, north of New York. “I loved his authenticity, his down-to-earth side. It's rare to be so connected to someone. » Donald Trump, she assures, is a gentleman: “Even today, he regularly calls my doctor to find out how I am doing. » Like him, she doesn't drink or smoke.

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A real fairy tale…at first

When, in 2002, she moved into the gilded penthouse at the top of Trump Tower, she admired its “good taste”. Life is sweet with this man who takes her to the most popular parties, from the Oscars to the Grammys. On April 26, 2004, on the evening of her 34th birthday, they were at the Met Gala, the annual fashion event in New York, where all the biggest stars appeared in extravagant outfits.

Before going there, he tells her he wants to spend “his whole life” with her. “I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. » They climb the steps of the gala under the flashes of the photographers. She is wearing a Versace dress and a 15-carat diamond ring on her finger. A few days later, Anna Wintour, the boss of “Vogue”, which organized the event, called him and offered him a plane ticket to Paris to try on wedding dresses at Dior, and sent his artistic director , André Leon Talley, to help her choose her outfit… The wedding took place at Mar-a-Lago, on January 22, 2005, among stars of TV, sports and politics (Bill and Hillary Clinton, which Trump then supports). A real fairy tale.

Melania has her husband “under her skin”, at least that is the impression that emerges from reading her book. On June 16, 2015, she was alongside her husband for the announcement of his first presidential candidacy. “I was very proud,” she wrote. That day, however, his golden life will be turned upside down. She, who flees fame, becomes the most exposed woman in the world. She has difficulty coping with the fiasco of her speech at the 2016 Republican convention, which uses entire sentences from Michelle Obama's speech eight years earlier.

Like her husband when he was attacked, she refuses to take responsibility and accuses her collaborators of “betrayal”, guilty of not having carried out the necessary checks. Donald Trump is new to politics, she even more so. But she learns quickly. On November 8, 2016, Trump won. The night is long. Melania goes to bed at 5 a.m., wakes up two hours later. She says she is “impressed by his calm”. “This man has remarkable resistance to pressure. And yet it was going to continue to rise,” she marvels.

She shares the thesis that the 2020 election was stolen

Donald and Melania are on the “same wavelength,” she says. The two lead parallel lives, live in separate rooms, but support each other. He lets her do it when she decides to pack her bags at the White House six months late, in June 2017, to allow Barron, their son, to finish his school year in New York. She is involved in all his struggles and shares his hatreds, in particular towards the media, she who could not bear that a tabloid could have called her a “gold digger”, interested only in her money. husband. The “scandalous” jacket she wore one day, crossed out with an inscription “I really don’t care, do u?” » (“I don't care, what about you?”), was, she said today, a message sent to the press… in the form of a middle finger. The photos where she poses naked two years before her meeting with Trump, which made her detractors go crazy? Nothing less, for her, than an “artistic” celebration of the female body.

In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, Trump caught the virus. He is devastated, she is by his side. “The first evening, I carefully monitored his breathing and felt his forehead. In the middle of the night, I thought his condition was improving, but the next morning, it was worse,” she says. She insists that he go to the hospital, which he eventually does. According to her, her husband is then “unfairly” attacked for his management of Covid. If he loses the 2020 election, it is, she writes, the fault of “the media, Big Tech [les géants de la technologie, de Google à Facebook en passant par Twitter, NDLR] and the “deep state” [la bureaucratie anti-trumpiste de Washington] ».

Melania espouses her husband's thesis that the election was stolen from him. On January 6, 2021, while the Capitol was ransacked by Trumpist hordes, she was careful not to appeal for calm. But simply because, she will justify herself, her staff had not informed her of events in real time… Always the art of discarding, even if it means passing for a Marie-Antoinette living in her tower of ivory. Likewise, she will virulently denounce the FBI search on August 8, 2022, in the case of the classified files that Trump is then accused of having illegally taken home, even though they were to be handed over to the National Archives. “An unacceptable intrusion” which reminds him of the investigation carried out by the Yugoslav communist regime into his father, a lover of beautiful cars.

Abortion, the only subject that opposes them

The former First Lady is careful not to mention, in her book, the multiple sexual scandals to which her husband is linked. Question of survival, no doubt. She was conspicuous by her absence during Donald Trump's trials, notably the one where he was convicted of having bought the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels. The facts date back to 2006, when Barron was 4 months old, and according to all accounts, Melania took this unpacking very badly.

In the end, between her and him, there is only one subject that can oppose them: abortion. She is for it, he is against it (after having been for it for a long time). She speaks about it forcefully, going so far as to adopt a progressive slogan: “My body, my choice”. This point of divergence is the main surprise of his Memoirs. But is he really overshadowing her husband? On the contrary, it has the advantage of broadening its electoral base.

“I was nervous when I read the book because I wondered if she had written horrible things about me,” Trump joked on October 27 at Madison Square Garden, while praising the fact that he was “number one of “New York Times” sales charts.” In the front row, next to billionaire Elon Musk who was holding his young son on his lap, Melania was smiling: more than ever, campaigning for her husband.