Melania may not like him, but she’ll never let the bully go
To be honest, I’ve always been relieved you can never know what goes on in other people’s marriages. Couples who throw crockery at each other can often outlast the most outwardly loved-up unions. Which brings us to the US First Couple, on the red carpet in Israel.
All of us armchair Trump-watchers goggled at the spectacle of POTUS and FLOTUS leaving the ark of Air Force One two by two. He tries to grab her hand. Melania swats him off with a killer little ninja flick of the wrist, and we all went: Check. That. Out.
Who needs his Twitter feed when the body language provides such a detailed field guide to the Trumps: not just to the alpha-male stuff he does with other leaders but the Me Tarzan, You Jane drama of their own relationship.
When I saw the furious flick that went round the world in a flash – a scornful move she repeated in Rome – it told me this: Melania’s not down with pretending her marriage is as perfect as a piece of political performance.
She’s not going to be the silent Stepford Wife whose sole function is to make her husband look good. In fact – in that second anyway – she probably doesn’t even like him and doesn’t care who knows. For all the above reasons, she doesn’t wanna hold his hand. It looked as if The Flick was taking their dysfunction up a notch, even though it’s been obvious since the off that Donald and Melania do not have the easy physical rapport of their predecessors in the White House.
On Inauguration Day, he bounded up the steps to the White House leaving her to straggle with the gift-box from Tiffany – and then he appeared to snap at her after the vows, leading her face to fall and the whole ‘free Melania’ hashtag thing. In contrast to the touchyfeely Obamas, nobody is tempted to shout ‘get a room’ at the Trumps. Last week, he behaved more like the prize ape than President in his anxiety to be the ranking Jungle VIP. He yanked Macron’s arm during their manshake-off. He shoved aside the poor PM of Montenegro in his haste to nab pole position in the family photo of Nato leaders.
He generally behaved throughout like the brash, ugly, American abroad, and his wife did little to hide her distaste for his ‘king of the swingers’ act.
And yet. The Trumps have been together for 17 years, and I wouldn’t count them out yet, despite the body language.
He’s all about winning. ‘Billions of dollars and millions of jobs’ was his own verdict of his foreign tour. Women like a powerful man – and he’s the most powerful in the world. So what did we see when they finally arrived in Sicily, after Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican and Brussels? Yes she looked sulky, but there was no doubting it. He’d won. They were hand in hand.