Mystery still surrounds Melania Trump after four years in the White House

Most members of the Trump clan have never strayed from the spotlight.

But unlike the rest of the family, after four turbulent years of Donald Trump’s presidency, former first lady Melania has accomplished the impossible – we still don’t know who she really is.

Love them or despise them, the rest of the family has dominated the headlines; Donald Trump and his three adult children from his first marriage, Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Jr, have been constant fixtures on our television screens and social media.

But throughout the roller coaster that was the Trump administration, Melania somehow managed to maintain her enigmatic facade.

It is a fact that has even been recognized by Trump’s allies.

Former senior adviser to the president, Kellyanne Conway, said in a recent interview that “there remains a curiosity and a mystery about her.”

So who exactly is the real Melania Trump, and what are her next moves now that her husband has finally been honored in the Oval Office?

Who is Melania?

Melania Knauss was born in 1970 in Slovenia, which was then under the communist regime of Yugoslavia.

She was discovered by photographer Stane Jerko in 1987 in the city of Ljubljana, and soon pursued a modeling career in Paris and Milan, before moving to New York in 1996.

The young model met her future husband at a party two years later, and the couple tied the knot in 2005 before welcoming their son Barron, Donald Trump’s fifth child, in March 2006, the same year they met. became a US citizen.

In 2010, she launched her own accessories line, Melania Timepieces and Jewelery, as well as the Melania Marks Skin Care Collection, but by 2017 both companies had disappeared.

Melania Trump became the First Lady of the United States on January 20, 2017 after her husband’s election victory in 2016, and she and Barron moved from New York to Washington to join him in the White House in June of 2017, after Barron completed the school year.

Wild theories

The unorthodox term of the 50-year-old woman as first lady sparked a lot of strange theories and speculation about what was really going on behind the scenes.

Overwhelmingly, audiences tended to view her in two ways: as a victim trapped in a loveless marriage and hostage to a tight prenuptial agreement, or as a cold and ruthless villain.

The first rumor has been partly inspired by her own behavior, as Melania has been repeatedly seen slapping her husband’s hand at public events during his presidency.

Interest in Trump’s marriage also reached a fever pitch when former The Apprentice contestant and former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed that the first lady was “counting every minute until he is out of the office and she can get divorced. “

But a scathing revelation written by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and adviser to Melania Trump, challenged the common belief that the former first lady was a powerless victim, and instead described her as someone as ironclad and calculating as her husband.

“She is not just an accomplice, she is their facilitator. And she is their biggest cheerleader and sadly, she has done nothing more than that,” Wolkoff said in an interview with CNN after the Jan. 6 siege of the US Capitol.

She doubled down on that unflattering description in an op-ed for The Daily Beast, writing: “Many still believe that Melania is powerless, but don’t be fooled; she is also an abuser, of the worst kind … Melania knows and supports. Donald and his views “.

Adding to Melania’s mystique are persistent claims that she used a body double to replace her in events during the Trump administration, her long and inexplicable disappearance after undergoing kidney surgery in May 2018, and her near-total absence during the second and doomed choice of her husband. Bell.

Behind the scenes

First ladies traditionally use their position to generate positive public relations for the president and his administration, to support him in the electoral campaign and to defend their own worthy causes.

But Melania Trump has always seemed reluctant to take on much of a public role outside of her widely criticized “Be Best” anti-bullying campaign.

Her apparent lack of interest in the role of first lady did not go unnoticed.

The Atlantic noted the abnormality in October of last year, just before Donald Trump’s electoral defeat on November 3.

“You get to know the first lady in a thousand ways: wearing haute couture in Vogue and blue jeans in People; sitting on the couch on a morning show or next to a late-night talk show host, who treats her gently and laughs while making some scripted jokes, “the article reads.

“But here we are, possibly at the end of this administration, and Melania is as mysterious now as she was the day her husband climbed the stairs of the White House to shake hands with the Obamas.”

Equally mysterious are his post-White House plans. Melania has revealed little of her next moves, other than her hope to publish a picture book about her personal style in the coming months.

After four years in the spotlight, Melania Trump has managed to reveal almost nothing about herself, aside from how fiercely she seems to value her privacy and freedom.

And now that the Trumps have finally left the White House, it’s unlikely we will know much about the person behind the designer suits and empty smile.