According to a new Vanity Fair profile of Melania Trump, she really did not want to end up being America’s first lady.
“This isn’t something she wanted and it isn’t something he ever thought he’d win,” a “longtime” Trump family friend is quoted as saying. “She didn’t want this come hell or high water. I don’t think she thought it was going to happen.”
Despite hoping she wouldn’t have a future in the White House, though, she was reportedly the person to give her husband the push he needed to finally decide to run. Roger Stone, a Trump campaign advisor who was ultimately fired in 2015, told Vanity Fair that Melania, fed up with Donald’s indecisiveness, urged him to make up his mind.
“She was very clearly the one who said, ‘Either run or don’t run,” Stone told the magazine. “‘Your friends are tired of this striptease. Every four years you talk about it.’” He added, “She knew it was in his blood. He always wanted to run. She is the one who pushed him to run just by saying run or do not run. I don’t think she was ever too crazy about it.”
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Melania Trump’s apparent disinterest in being first lady, and perhaps politics as a whole, was clear throughout the 2015-2016 campaign, in which she barely participated. Her few attempts at helping her husband win mostly failed—she was widely mocked for delivering a speech at the Republican National Convention that plagiarized chunks of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention; when she decried cyberbullying and announced that combating the issue would be one of her main focuses if her husband clinched a victory, she was again roundly ridiculed for evidently not realizing she was married to a man notorious for insulting just about everything and everyone on Twitter.
Following Inauguration Day, Melania has continued to show little enthusiasm for her new role as first lady. She waited until June, after her 11-year-old son Barron finished the school year in New York City, to move to the White House. Her staff is comprised of nine people, less than half the size of the staffs her two predecessors managed, a fact that has reportedly caused numerous logistical problems when it comes to responding to requests for tours and putting together events like the annual Easter egg roll.
It wouldn’t be surprising to discover that Melania is secretly rooting for her husband’s impeachment along with much of the American people.
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
