Melania Trump has been betrayed many times. Early on there was the organiser of an Italian modeling competition who stole her prize money from the envelope he'd just handed her.
Later, the petty squabbles of two corporate executives over a contract meant her skincare line, Melania Caviar Complexe C6, never made it to department store shelves. Then there's Michelle Obama.
The former first lady's brand-new memoir, Melania, introduces her predecessor with startling familiarity, and the Trump family taking six long months to move into the White House after Donald won the 2016 election is all Michelle's fault.
Watch: Melania and Donald Trump discuss their marriage. Post continues after video.
"It is customary for the incoming first family to start the moving process when the outgoing first family leaves for the holidays in December," Melania writes. "Despite reaching out to the Obamas' team and requesting a convenient time for our visit, we did not receive a response for weeks. When we finally received the information, it was filled with errors."
As a result of Michelle's poor planning, Melania continues, "I was only able to beginrenovations after the inauguration." Melania knows you want to know what she thought about January 6. But first, she needs to talk about another tragic January.
Clearing the air on these sorts of misunderstandings is why Melania wrote the book, she says. "As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation, I feel a responsibility to set the record straight." Funnily enough, there's another Michelle-related incident that the media also got wrong. Remember when Melania was found to have plagiarized a speech of Obama's during her appearance at the 2016 Republican National Convention?
The plagiarism wasn't Michelle's fault, but it also wasn't Melania's.
It was Meredith McIver's. "I relied on Meredith to help me with the speech and the campaign to review it," Melania writes of the Trump Organization employee. McIver's failure to perform her duty "filled me with a profound sense of betrayal."
Someone who has never betrayed Melania – whether through pursuing extremist policies as president, storing national security secrets in a bathroom at Mar-A-Lago, or being found liable for sexual assault – is her husband Donald. "I could have easily captured the attention of numerous celebrities if I had so desired," Melania writes, but it was Donald's "energy and zest for life," as well as a shared love of fast cars and the music of Elton John, which brought the Slovenian model and the New York businessman together.
In Melania's telling, Donald is an unfailingly kind and considerate husband. He's nice to me, she seems to think, so what's the problem? Following a first date at Donald's country house, built in 1919 and set on 230 acres, Melania makes a decision about their relationship: "I refrained from passing judgment, choosing instead to enjoy his company."
Listen to Mamamia Out Loud where Mia, Holly, and Jessie discussed why the world used to ship Melania Trump and Justin Trudeau. Post continues after audio.
This attitude prevails through some of the more tumultuous and traumatic episodes of recent American history. The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, occasioned by the murder of George Floyd and stifled outside the White House with unusual force at Trump's request, are "troubling." Melania finds other things troubling, too, such as a bank not allowing her to open a new account, a school backing out of having her speak there, and a private equity firm she has been working with on vague media ventures cancelling an agreement with her "due to personal animosity towards my husband."
The opposite of troubling in Melania's world is "sophisticated," and among seven things described that way in the book is the colour palette she chose for her wedding to Donald in 2006. (It was white.) The 2020 election, meanwhile, is "not normal." When the media reports on election night that various states still need to count mail-in ballots, "everything was called into question for me," Melania writes. "You can't continue to count votes for days."
Surely 155 million ballots can't take that long to go through?
"I am not the only person who questions the results," she adds, before blaming her press secretary for not briefing her adequately about the insurrection. "Donald was occupied with his responsibilities, and I with mine," she states briskly, getting back to what she was doing that day, which was supervising a photo shoot of the tennis pavilion she'd built on the White House lawn.
A lot of the press coverage around this memoir has centred on the surprising revelation in a standalone coda that Melania supports abortion rights. But that disclosure reads like an afterthought. It isn't even the book's most shocking aspect.
What I was continually struck by was Melania's extraordinary ability to compartmentalise her life. To draw a divide between her own "sophisticated" existence, where days start with a strong espresso and a light breakfast and often end with a French couture gown, and literally everyone else's. She is clearly close to her family and writes movingly about her mother's influence, but we don't hear about a single friend.
Years after her whirlwind courtship with Donald, they don't seem to spend any time together. There's something so lonely about the way their eventful stint in Washington is summed up. "Our time in the White House had been transformative," she writes, "forging bonds with many." With whom, though? Melania never says.
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Feature image: Getty.