A month before the US presidential election, former First Lady Melania Trump’s memoir made headlines for her stance in favor of abortion rights. But the enigmatic wife of the Republican billionaire does not say much more in this autobiography published Tuesday in the United States.
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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 former First Lady (2017-2021). A position in contrast to that of her husband, who has always congratulated himself on having appointed three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, thus contributing to the decision which dynamited in 2022 the federal protection of the right to abortion.
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 insists.
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.
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The counting, a “bazaar”
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, even though no proof of large-scale electoral fraud has been provided since.
The former First Lady prefers to describe the counting process as a “bazaar,” saying that “many Americans still have doubts about the election that day.”
Donald Trump is indicted by federal courts and in the state of Georgia for trying to illegally overturn the results of this election.
And 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, ensuring that she was busy this that day with renovations to the White House.
Very discreet
Very discreet during her husband’s mandate and even more reserved on the public stage since she left Washington, Melania Trump 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 virulent and lying diatribes against them.
She also promises that the message “I REALLY CARE, DON’T YOU?” that could be read on her jacket the day of a 2018 visit to the US-Mexico border was not aimed at the children she met, but at the “media.” To “let them know that I was not affected by their opinions about me,” she assures.
