In the months following her family’s disorderly departure from the White House, the former first lady has spent time hiding at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster clubs with her family, occasionally appearing alongside her husband. . Although the former president is considered to be operating out of political interest, his relatives say his wife could affect his decision to take on the exhausting and very public role of candidate again.
“The only thing Trump is interested in right now are golf and Melania. And if she doesn’t want him to run, then she’ll be pushing a big rock up the hill, “said a person close to Trump.” I don’t think politics is his thing. He doesn’t like the game. “
Ever since the Trumps slid down the escalators of Trump Tower to announce a 2016 race, Melania Trump has been a difficult couple to read in her husband’s political maneuvers. She rarely appeared on the campaign trail and, as a first lady, kept out of public view.
The perception created by her private nature – which doesn’t really approve of her husband’s behavior – was contradicted by the few times she arose. He was famously wearing a “I DON’T CARE” jacket when he went to visit a detention center that contained small migrant children. And it was secretly recorded by her former confidant Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who said “who makes a comment about Christmas things and decorations” in 2018.
The end of her husband’s tenure underscored her discomfort with the national political stage. According to her former chief of staff Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump spent part of election night 2020 sleeping while her husband worried about vote counting and network coverage while he was hosted with advisers in the White House.
“I called a few times, quietly at first, but louder at every attempt,” Grisham wrote, according to new material in his upcoming book entitled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at Trump’s White House “. “I finally opened the bedroom door only to find that Melania Trump was fast asleep.”
Melania Trump and Grisham had been at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club the night before. They had gotten up late to prepare for election night and got up early to vote and then returned to Washington, DC.
“I already knew how much it meant to sleep for her, but still, I didn’t imagine being asleep at a time like this,” she wrote. “Maybe she thought someone would wake her up if Trump won.”
Melania Trump finally woke up and was on stage with her husband in the East Room at 2:30 a.m. as she falsely said she had won the election and had been robbed due to fraud . A spokeswoman for Melania Trump made no comment on the new excerpts from the book. Another former White House aide understood that the former first lady was “taking a nap,” as the night was expected to arrive late.
On Monday morning, POLITICO Playbook published the first excerpt from Grisham’s book, in which Grisham urged Melania Trump to condemn the January 6 Capitol Hill riots as they began, but did not want to do so in one word: “No. “.
In response, Melania Trump’s office issued a statement accusing Grisham of trying to “redeem herself after a bad performance as press secretary, failed personal relationships and unprofessional behavior in the White House.”
His mention of “failed personal relationships” seemed offensive to many people at Trump World, given Grisham’s two divorces and his previous relationship with former Trump aide Max Miller, who is now running in Congress. Citing three people familiar with the incident, POLITICO magazine reported in July that the relationship with Miller “ended when he pushed her against a wall and slapped her in her Washington apartment after she accused him of having -the deceived “. Miller denied the allegation.
It is unprecedented for first ladies to get into public fights with their former helpers who write revealing books. And it is made even more remarkable by the silence that Melania Trump has been off her shoulder today. The former first lady has not appeared in public or used her celebrity to continue talking about her Eastern Wing causes. A former White House official said he has focused on his son and family.
“It’s completely gone from the radar screen,” a person close to Trump said. “You don’t see her anywhere.”
Melania Trump’s recalcitrance and retreat to private life contrasts with the former first women of the past. During her first year after leaving the White House, Michelle Obama criticized the Trump administration for relaxing the nutritional standards of school lunches and accused the Trump White House of spreading fear before writing a memoir of best-sellers. Laura Bush also came to the book circuit after leaving the White House while Hillary Clinton won the Senate election at the end of her husband’s second term, becoming the first person to be a senator and first lady for two weeks in early 2001.
The few times Melania Trump has spoken out has been largely restricted to posting on social media. He took to Instagram and Twitter on the occasion of his 9/11 birthday, saying that he was “praying for the families and loved ones of the sea heroes killed in Kabul and for everyone who suffers during this difficult time” and to wish to the Americans a happy fourth of July.
And, in recent months, he has struggled with prominent presidential historian Michael Beschloss, saying he had “He showed his ignorance by showing an image of the rose garden in its beginnings. … His misleading information is dishonorable and should never be trusted as a professional historian. ”In mid-July, he also tweeted a cautionary warning to people for distrusting what they read about her. “How can people believe in any of the books that talk about Mrs. Trump’s life? The stories about her are idle gossip, many of which are misleading, and only a few are true. Writers have no credibility. “
A former White House official expressed a desire for Melania Trump to take on causes such as convincing Trump voters to get the coronavirus vaccine instead of fighting related to herself.
“It makes me sad that because she still has a platform as a first lady to do good things,” the former official said, “especially by encouraging people to get vaccinated, she’s just complained about what people say about ‘she’.