Private life of a first lady

BIOGRAPHY: BOOK LIFTS LID ON MELANIA TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE SUITE, CLOTHES, FAMILY

She is hardly a docile third wife of extremely powerful man, says author.

Melania Trump has a White House suite of her own, is less than chummy with first daughter Ivanka and uses her wardrobe to make statements, according to a new biography about the US first lady.

Free, Melania, an unauthorised look at President Donald Trump’s wife by CNN reporter Kate Bennett, was due to be released yesterday.

At 49 and three years into her husband’s administration, the Slovenia-born ex-model remains genuinely private and “mysterious” to much of the public, while acutely aware of all that is said about her and her husband, says Bennett.

But she is hardly the docile third wife of an extremely powerful man accused of being a serial womaniser, the author writes.

Instead, Melania is prepared to let her husband know what she thinks – and to use her sharp elbows when she feels slighted.

The first lady is “way more powerful and influential with her husband” than the public knows, Bennett

says. The author confirmed reports last year that Melania was responsible for the firing of a senior White House national security official Mira Ricardel, after the first lady felt slighted during a trip to Africa in October 2018.

The book also confirmed that the first lady lives in a two-room suite on the third floor of the White House – one floor up from the president’s master bedroom.

The suite offers Melania extra space to do her hair and makeup. She also has an exercise room with a Pilates machine.

In another revelation, Bennett said the kidney treatment that led to Melania’s 25-day absence from public view last year was much more serious and painful than previously revealed.

Bennett also says that when Melania wears pantsuits and other menswear styles, it signals unhappiness with her husband, “because Trump notoriously likes to see women in tight, short, ubersexy and feminine dresses”.

The book does not have any direct input from Melania, whose husband has declared Bennett’s network an enemy of his administration.

It labels the first lady’s “Be Best” campaign against bullying a poorly executed flop, but otherwise is generally positive. –

Picture: AFP FAMILY MATTERS. US President Donald Trump, Melania Trump and their son Barron walk across the South Lawn before leaving the White House on board Marine One last month.