Forging her own path
SHE IS THE LEAST LIKE TRUMP OF ALL THE TRUMPS
Donald and Melania Trump’s remarkably separate daily routines begin with him getting up around 5.30am, watching cable news shows and tweeting.
The first lady wakes in her own bedroom a bit later, according to two close friends of the Trumps. She then readies their 12-year-old son for school, including checking to make sure his homework is in his backpack.
Amid the noise and churn of the Trump administration – most recently about how the president paid money to silence Stormy Daniels – Melania Trump has settled into a quieter routine, often apart from the president, raising their son and carving out a place for herself in a most untraditional White House.
The first lady has not directly addressed the affairs that Daniels and another woman, Karen McDougal, said they had with her husband. But she has noticeably begun to raise her profile, independent from the president’s.
Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s spokesperson, said the first lady will devote the rest of the Trump presidency to the issues children face today and their well-being.
Political marriages tend to be more complicated than most, but it’s striking that the Trumps make so little effort to project a more united front.
Although both are keenly aware of the power of visual images, some of their memorable moments together are awkward: Melania swatting his hand away on a tarmac, and several times caught on camera seeming to resist his outreach.
“She is a dignified, private person, and she’ll deal with her personal life in private and it’s noone’s business,” said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a longtime friend of Melania’s. “They are not that couple that holds hands just because; she is old-world European and it’s not who she is.”
It is unusual to see a candid shot of the president enjoying an unplanned moment with his wife, or even with Barron, the first young son in the White House since John F Kennedy Jnr in the early ’60s.
The Trumps are often apart, even during their free time, according to several people who know the couple’s schedules. At Mar-a-Lago on holidays and weekends, the president plays golf or dines with politicians, business executives and media personalities on the patio, while Melania is often nowhere to be seen.
According to several current and former aides, the president and first lady often do not eat together in the White House either.
“They spend very little to no time together,” said one longtime friend of the president.
Grisham said the president and Melania do spend time with each other.
“Aside from the president’s solo trips, the family spends most evenings together.”
She also played down the headlines about Trump’s alleged affairs and said Melania “is focused on being a mom. She’s focused on being a wife, and she’s focused on her role as first lady. And that’s it. The rest is just noise”.
Melania grants few interviews but during the campaign she told The
Washington Post that she and her husband are “very independent”, adding, “we give ourselves and each other space”.
According to several White House staff members, Melania has erected a de facto wall between the East Wing, where she is renovating her office and enjoying growing popularity, and the West Wing, where her husband and Ivanka Trump, her eldest stepdaughter, have offices.
Yet, many political analysts believe that Trump will need Melania at his side if he wants to win again in 2020.
The Trumps have broken the traditional mould of a presidential family from the moment he was sworn in. While Melania stood beside the president at the Capitol, his two ex-wives, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples, sat in the crowd.
Trump is the only president to be married three times. Melania is 48, and the president is 71.
Rather than move into the White House with her husband, Melania stayed in New York for six months to allow Barron to finish his school year.
Ivanka, 36, and Melania, both former models, do not have a close relationship and are very different from one another, several people who know them said. Grisham said it was not only wrong to say Melania was not close to her stepdaughter but “hurtful”.
Last year, an official White House statement described Ivanka as holding an “unprecedented role for a first daughter” and she has at times taken on the duties of a first lady.
Ivanka acts as the president’s policy advisor, has travelled the globe as her father’s surrogate, and sat down with world leaders at the White House.
But recently her public profile has been reduced.
Several polls have shown that as Melania becomes more visible, her popularity is rising. In many ways the image she projects is the least like Trump of all the Trumps. –