First lady putting herself first?
Stalled move to White House to renegotiate her pre-nuptial agreement, new book says
When Melania Trump stayed behind in New York after the inauguration, she said she didn’t want to interrupt son Barron’s school year. Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan reveals in a new book the first lady was also delaying arrival as leverage for renegotiating her pre-nup.
After news about Trump’s alleged sexual indiscretions and infidelities emerged, from the “grab them by the p---y” Access Hollywood tape to an affair with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal; Melania learned new details, Jordan writes.
She needed to cool off, and “to amend her financial arrangement with Trump — what Melania referred to as ‘taking care of Barron,’ ” Jordan writes in The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.
Melania’s original pre-nup had not been incredibly generous, Jordan reports. But she’s been married to Trump longer than both his ex-wives and had bargaining power: Her perceived calming effect on him was so great Trump’s pals and at least one of his adult children exhorted her to join him in Washington as soon as possible.
Jordan conducted more than 100 interviews, with everyone from Melania’s Slovenian schoolmates to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and lays out an argument that Melania Trump is as devoted to her own mythmaking as her husband.
“Both are avid creators of their own history,” Jordan writes, arguing that the #FreeMelania hashtag ought to be retired because of her consistent support of her husband and her moves to stay in the White House.
“She is … much more like him than it appears,” he adds.
Jordan, a longtime Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003, secured a rare one-on-one interview with Melania while covering the 2016 campaign.
The reporting goes back to Melania’s childhood in a small town in Slovenia. The mythmaking, Jordan writes, began early, when she would fail to correct reporters who cited her age incorrectly, always younger than she was. Despite saying she wouldn’t get plastic surgery, photographers who worked with her said they’ve seen the scars.
She attended a highly competitive architecture program at the University of Ljubljana, but did not graduate, though she claimed in sworn testimony to have a bachelor’s degree. There’s also little evidence to suggest her claims of being able to speak four or five languages fluently are true.
Reporting in the book suggests she only speaks English and Slovene fluently.