the reluctant first lady hits the spotlight
When the trumps walked up the red carpeted steps of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire last Thursday evening, it marked more than the most lavish event of their controversial first official visit to the UK. It was also a key moment in Melania’s high-profile re-entry into the global spotlight as First Lady.
Since being hospitalised in May for a kidney condition, she had rarely been seen until last week, when she accompanied her husband on his visit to Brussels for the NATO summit, then to Britain. Against a turbulent backdrop of protests, a giant Trump Baby balloon flying over Parliament Square, one of the biggest ever police operations and the Government threatening to implode over Brexit, the Trumps’ four days in the UK were unlike any other visit by a world leader.
On arrival on Airforce One at Stansted airport on Thursday afternoon, they were whisked to the American ambassador’s home in London’s Regent’s Park in Marine One, Trump’s bulletproof helicopter. That evening, as demonstrators gathered outside Blenheim, he chatted happily to Theresa May as they walked into the black-tie dinner, even
taking her hand at one point. Yet by Friday morning, Trump had delivered May a crushing blow, throwing her proposed Brexit deal into crisis by warning in an interview executed in Brussels that it would ‘kill’ a trade deal with the US and suggesting Boris Johnson would be a ‘great Prime Minister’. By the afternoon’s press conference, he had labelled the interview ‘fake news’.
For Melania, though, it was Friday’s programme that marked a turning point. Before tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle in the afternoon, she spent the morning with the PM’S husband, Philip May, visiting British Army veterans and helping local schoolchildren assemble Remembrance Day poppies at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. It was the first time she has promoted Be Best – her campaign to further the wellbeing of children – overseas.
Months of preparation went into planning her role. ‘ The White House would have sent teams in advance to plan every aspect of the programme to the nth degree,’ says Isabel Spearman, former special adviser to Samantha Cameron, who coordinated her part in the Obamas’ visits to the UK – and the Camerons’ to Washington.
‘ We were so lucky with Michelle Obama, because she was incredibly kind,’ says Spearman. ‘She did these events all the time and held Sam’s hand in all the big moments. Melania is less experienced, and the Trumps are far less popular, but Philip is a very nice, charming man so I’m sure he’ll have put her at ease.’
Last week, because Philip’s main role is his career as an investment relationship manager, the event chosen was specially for Melania. ‘ The event Melania did with Philip would have been deliberately kept small and quite private, because her team would have been very wary of putting her in any situation where she might receive a negative response,’ says Spearman.
According to insiders, 18 months into her husband’s presidency, Melania is still far from at ease with her new life. ‘ When you look at her, you see someone struggling with a role she had no interest in playing,’ says Emily Jane Fox, author of Born Trump, a new book about the First Family. Melania married a very rich man, but not one she ever thought would become President.
‘ When Donald became President, she took months to move to Washington, which tells you something,’ says Fox. ‘And when she did, she didn’t take to the role of First Lady the way most people do. She’s been very reluctant.’
For a woman accustomed to having the best of everything courtesy of her husband’s fortune, all her new position could offer Melania was pressure to behave as First Ladies usually do, devoting herself to worthy initiatives. She finally unveiled Be Best in May, and was immediately lampooned for its vagueness.
‘Michelle Obama’s campaign Let’s Move had clear goals – but Be Best has no goal, no path to follow,’ says Fox. ‘But it’s very difficult for Melania, because everything she does is viewed in light of her husband’s behaviour. She’s been attacked for talking about cyberbullying, because her husband is the ultimate bully. She’s hamstrung.’
Even when she showed a rare hint of rebellion by making a unilateral decision to visit the Us-mexico border to see children separated from their parents – informing her husband of the trip, rather than asking permission – she sparked a firestorm by wearing a Zara jacket with ‘I really don’t care, do u?’ emblazoned across the back.
Despite such baffling missteps, Fox says, ‘She seems at her most natural and human
she’s smart and tough; she doesn’t back down
when she’s at events involving children. She is known to be a tremendous mother to her 12-year-old, Barron.’ She adds that the surrendered wife label often attached to her doesn’t quite reflect the reality: ‘ We haven’t really seen any substance from her, but she’s smart and tough, too; she doesn’t back down.’
While Melania’s impenetrable exterior can make her seem aloof and slightly cold, the White House correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, says she’s different in person. ‘She’s very personable. She’s demure, not extroverted like her husband.’ Haberman believes the attacks she has faced for Be Best are premature. ‘I don’t quite know yet what the initiative is going to look like, it’s still a work in progress, but I think she deserves the chance to try to demonstrate what it is before we criticise her.’
There have been rumours that she and Donald would be divorced were it not for his presidency. Certainly, they lead separate lives much of the time, with Melania frequently retreating back to New York, while her husband reportedly lies in bed in his separate bedroom watching three TV screens.
This isn’t the full picture, however. ‘People close to her say that there’s a weird sort of chemistry and connection between them,’ says Fox. ‘He does have a level of respect for her. He values her opinion – although, as we all know, he’ll do what he wants.’
By the time Melania left Britain, we hadn’t learned much more about the woman behind the glossy veneer than when she arrived. And it seems that’s the way she wants it.