The reports of Donald Trump paying off the porn star blindsided the first lady, who was furious with her husband, according to two people close to the couple. She has kept a low profile since.
WASHINGTON—During the past week, Melania Trump, a notoriously private first lady, made three very public decisions: She cancelled a trip abroad with the president, made an impromptu visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and flew to Mar-a-Lago, where she spent part of her short trip relaxing at the spa.
As usual, her movements turned into something of a political Rorschach test. Did her movements symbolize a simple need to unwind, a deep displeasure with her role or all of the above?
Aides to Melania Trump say that she is focusing on her role and her family. But her relative silence and independent travel in recent weeks is set against a salacious backdrop: A Wall Street Journal report that the porn star Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 just before the 2016 election to keep quiet about an affair she had a decade earlier with U.S. President Donald Trump — when the Trumps were newlyweds, and while Melania Trump was pregnant with their son, Barron.
Melania and Donald Trump have had a tumultuous relationship at times over the years, but few episodes have roiled the peace as much as the news surrounding Daniels. The reports of a payoff blindsided the first lady, who was furious with her husband, according to two people close to the couple. She has kept a low profile since.
On Tuesday, Melania Trump is expected to resurface. The White House said that she will attend Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, typically the most high-profile appearance of the year for first ladies. The East Wing, which has been vacillated between being forceful or unresponsive in recent weeks, gave a tentative confirmation on Monday: “That is the plan,” her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said an email. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that Melania Trump would attend, but that Barron would not.
The uncertainty over Melania Trump’s appearance was in contrast to her willingness to show up and support Donald Trump in the past. He has long been able to rely on his wife to step in to rationalize his behaviour, dismiss his accusers or hit back against naysayers.
In 2011, Melania Trump appeared on TV to support her husband’s attempts to pressure President Barack Obama into making his birth certificate public. In 2016, she again appeared on camera to dismiss an Access Hollywood recording from 2005 — in which Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals — as “boy talk.”
Melania Trump has also defended her husband against claims brought by multiple women that he sexually assaulted them.
“I believe my husband, I believe my husband — it was all organized from the opposition,” Melania Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper weeks before the 2016 election.
After the story about Daniels, there was no such pushback from the East Wing, and little in the way of public statements. After days of swirling rumours and repeated refusals to comment on the Melania Trump’s whereabouts after cancelling her trip to Davos, Switzerland, with the president, the first lady’s spokeswoman seemed to have had enough.
“The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs. Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into ‘main stream media’ reporting,” Grisham wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “She is focused on her family & role as FLOTUS — not the unrealistic scenarios being peddled daily by the fake news.”
A year into her husband’s presidency and her own tenure as first lady, Melania Trump finds herself in an unusual position — and perhaps at a disadvantage. There are few things she can share about herself without it being dissected — often negatively. When she revealed the tidbit that her favourite TV show was How to Get Away With Murder, for example, the show’s star, Viola Davis, weighed in to say that the first lady was “a captive in her own home.”
The polarizing nature of her husband’s presidency has also isolated Melania Trump from her predecessors. She is not part of a small group of first ladies, including Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, who have developed a bond based on knowing what it is like to be constantly scrutinized, with their popularity linked to their husbands’.
“First ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Hillary Clinton to Laura Bush have stood by their husbands at the lowest points in their presidency,” Kate Andersen Brower, an author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies, said in an interview. “We’re seeing a different example with Melania of a woman who has maybe had too much.”
The first lady’s trip on Thursday to the Holocaust Memorial Museum was, coincidentally or not, in the same direction as Joint Base Andrews, where she was headed to leave for a whirlwind trip to Palm Beach, Florida. While the president was still at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Melania Trump went to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida estate.
On Friday, onlookers at the resort were directed by the Secret Service to move their vehicles to ensure a wide berth for the first lady, who needed a secure path from her residence to the spa.
Attendees at a safari-themed fundraiser held at the resort on Friday had hoped for an impromptu visit by the first lady, but were told she had left just before the event began. In her stead, guests had to be satisfied with a giant portrait of the first lady, which failed to quickly sell at auction. (A portrait of Donald Trump sold for $17,500.)
“She had to leave just as we were starting,” said Terry Bomar, the event’s organizer. “The Secret Service made everybody stand inside as she was coming out.”
The roughly two-hour trip from Joint Base Andrews to Palm Beach International Airport cost $16,168 per hour, which means that the first lady’s short trip aboard a C-32A plane cost taxpayers around $64,600, according to figures kept by the Department of Defense.
This month, the East Wing has worked to swat down all manner of rumours about Melania Trump’s whereabouts and psyche, beginning with “Fire and Fury,” a book by Michael Wolff that described Melania Trump as a first-lady-to-be who had not supported Donald Trump’s candidacy and cried on election night. The first lady, who is known to instruct her aides to publicly hit back at reports on her behalf, had them emphatically deny Wolff’s account.
After Fire & Fury, two people close to Melania Trump stepped forward to defend her relationship with the president. One of them, Hilary Geary Ross, the wife of the commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, said in an interview in early January — days before the news of Daniels broke — that the Trumps enjoyed a “cosy” relationship.
“They seem like a cosy, happily married couple,” Ross said. “You can see they’ve got the chemistry with each other. You can see it and you can feel it.”
There was no similar pushback from the East Wing in light of the news about Daniels. And Ross did not respond to a request to comment further on Monday.
Melania Trump’s only public comments in the past few weeks have been limited to tweets and a statement delivered just after her visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the people whose lives and families were broken by the horrors of the Holocaust,” the first lady said in a statement. “Yet it is also through our shared humanity that we come together now in commemoration, strength, and love. My heart is with you, and we remember.”