Who exactly, is Melania Trump? Ever since the sphinx-eyed former model burst onto the political scene alongside her husband, former President Donald Trump, she has been something of an enigma: often seemingly apolitical and largely silentwith opaque motivations. She clearly doesn’t believe Trump’s policies were a dealbreaker — after all, she remains married to the man. But she also didn’t seem particularly eager to be in the political crosshairs.
The former very short memoir of the First Ladywith an all-black cover interrupted only by “MELANIA” printed in neat white block letters, promised to offer some insight “into the life of a remarkable woman who faced challenges with grace and determination.”
In fact, no such insight is offered. It is a difficult book to comment on because it contains nothing of note. This is a book you can judge by its cover. “Melania” isn’t just boring; it is a void.
This is a book you can judge by its cover. “Melania” isn’t just boring; it is a void.
Maybe Melania is too. Journalists have tried to profile her, interview friends and relatives and even people she grew up within an attempt to find someone who can help them decipher this cipher. But Melania may be more stick figure than hieroglyph; there doesn’t seem to be any complex code to crack.
Melania is exactly who she seems to be: a beautiful woman who has tried to be beautiful for a long time, who has found a rich man to take care of her. She loves her son, Barron, and her parents (her mother recently passed away). She likes expensive clothes and other luxuries. She may not be as aggressive, cruel a person as her husband, but she doesn’t seem as fervently compassionate either.
And that would all be fine if she had stayed on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with its rich, if clumsy and boorish people supposedly flirtatious husband. But Trump’s foray into politics has also swept her along, and her decision to stand by his side (even when she isn’t). she didn’t go to trial arising from his alleged feud with porn star Stormy Daniels during their marriage) is at least a symbol of her acceptance of his vulgarities and goals.
She did get some headlines – good and bad – for using her memoir as a voice public support for abortion rights just weeks before the election in which abortion is one of her husband’s weaker issues. But this, too, seems less a declaration of true independence and more one of cynical political gamesmanship: Her husband needs to bring in more female voters, and many women are angry that he appointed Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
In that sense, Melania and Donald may not be so different. Neither is politically sophisticated or particularly attentive to policy. Neither shows much compassion or even interest in other people. Trump is angry and vicious, while Melania is obtuse and stoic; he is emotionally incontinent, while she often appears to be in emotional rigor mortis; he is behaviorally uninhibited and says what he wants, while she is diligently reserved, perhaps because she has very little to say. But with both Trumps, what you see is what you get: there just isn’t that much.
The Vances – JD, who is running for vice president, and Usha, who would be the second lady – are much more fascinating. But they too can be more transparent than the public would hope.
Journalist Irin Carmon did that a fascinating profile of Usha Vance in The Cut, and it portrays a woman who doesn’t seem fit on her face for the role of political husband to a MAGA maniac.
Usha is the high-achieving daughter of highly educated immigrant parents, who married a man with whom she performed better academically and who was attracted to her intelligence; JD reportedly even considered taking her last name and being the primary caregiver for their children. Now he’s a different kind of man, someone who… rails against childless cat ladies and, as Carmon writes, “referring to his children as belonging to Usha” (“She has three children,” he said recently on a New York Times podcast).
Vance, Carmon writes, “often describes Usha as a ‘working mother,’ without suggesting that he has anything to juggle himself.” He has come a long way from the so-called stay-at-home dad who put his wife’s career first.”
Usha Vance has clerked for conservative judges, including federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, and Chief Justice John Roberts, but she doesn’t seem particularly conservative (or politically) herself. JD Vance once compared Trump to Hitler and expressed his respect for ambitious women; now he is Trump’s lackey at the highest level, mocking professional women who delay childbirth or – for whatever reason – do not give birth.
JD Vance once compared Trump to Hitler and expressed respect for ambitious women; now he is Trump’s lackey at the highest level.
After graduating from law school, Vance spent some time in the world of corporate law before turning to higher-dollar venture capital. While there he published a Finger-wagging memoir about his Appalachian working-class rootswho wrote about rural America in a way that appealed to wealthy coastal conservatives who wanted to believe that the poor and miserable were making themselves poorer. (While the book drew praise from both parties, leftists, it’s worth pointing out: were some of the harshest critics of “Hillbilly Elegy.”When he decided to run for Senate in Ohio, he was barely living in the state and had to quickly transform himself into a true working-class man — and one who sympathized with the MAGA movement.
Usha hasn’t adopted much of the MAGA woman aesthetic yet, but she has quit her job, joined her husband’s campaign, and supported her husband even as he demeans the kind of smart, educated, ambitious female archetype that really bothers her. recently embodied.
The public wants people in high places – and most people in the public eye, whether in politics or celebrities of some other kind – to have depth. We want them to be decipherable, but we also want to believe that they are special. If they don’t seem substantial or are fueled by a foolish and transparent motivation, we can assume they are covering something up. If they are at the top of their game, then so be it something there, right?
Perhaps with these four – the Trumps and the Vances – that is simply assuming too much. Maybe they are exactly who they appear to be: the Trumps are shallow, intellectually shallow, and money-obsessed; the Vances have principles that seemingly bow to their grand ambitions. All four of these people have had enough time to show the public who they are. I guess what we see is exactly what we get.