Melania Trump returns to the White House this coming Monday with, as she has said, “more experience and much more knowledge” than before, claiming her independence from her husband in one of the few measured statements she has made during a few years in which there was even speculation about divorce.
She will be the second woman in the history of the United States to serve as first lady for two non-consecutive terms after Frances Cleveland. Melania, 54 years old and of Slovenian origin, has confirmed these days that she will reside much of the time in the White House, thus ending another recurring rumor: that of distancing herself from Trump.
Throughout the campaign, and unlike Douglas Emhoff – Kamala Harris’s husband – Melania has chosen to remain in the background and has barely participated, except for being seen with her husband or saying a few words at the Madison Square Garden rally in New York.
Her discretion has only been interrupted at very specific moments in recent years, such as the attempted murder of her husband, or to show herself in favor of abortion – a thorny issue within the Republican Party and which her husband leaves in the hands of local governments – in the midst of the publication of his book.
A few days ago, on the eve of the return of the Trumps to the White House and coinciding with the start of the promotion of a documentary about her life that will be released in 2025, Melania gave an interview to Fox News in which she spoke about what she hopes will be a much more productive stage for her.
“I didn’t have much support,” confessed the future first lady, who regretted that some simply saw her as the president’s wife. “I am independent and I stand on my own two feet. I have my own ideas, my own yeses and noes,” she claimed.
“It’s an exciting time,” she said in the aforementioned interview, in which she reproached not having had enough help to carry out her project on mental health and the fight against harassment on social networks among the youngest and which she now hopes to renew as part of her identity as first lady in this new term.
THE APPARENT ANTITHESIS OF TRUMP
Behind closed doors, Melania has always offered an image of serenity and freedom from controversy, which is far from that projected by her husband, a bully Donald Trump splashed by several scandals for his alleged excesses with women, including a sexual assault on journalist Elizabeth Jean Carroll.
The most media-friendly of all of them has been that of the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, which has meant that Trump has gone down in history, among other things, for being the first convicted president of the United States, after it was proven that he paid for interpreters not to reveal an alleged sexual encounter when he was married and for fear that this could cost him the 2016 elections.
Melania has not been revealed as a first lady with excessive interest in politics, as some of her predecessors such as Hillary Clinton did, although some of her ideas on certain issues would not be far from those of her husband, as she has hinted in some interviews and statements.
In her book ‘Melania’, she vehemently defends the right to abortion, but also sympathizes with the theories of electoral fraud that Trump insists on today. “I am not the only person who questions the results,” she says, while stating that she did not understand the magnitude of the riots on January 6.
Asked on one occasion if she felt comfortable with her husband’s policies and aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric given her origin and that of her family, she answers that she arrived in the United States legally.
However, the way in which Melania obtained permanent residency is not without controversy. In 2018, it was learned that in 2000 – when she was Trump’s girlfriend and still bore the surname Knauss – she requested and obtained the so-called ‘Einstein visa’, which usually recognizes foreigners with “extraordinary abilities.”
It is not clear how the United States Government granted a Slovenian model residency through a program that usually benefits recognized academics, elite athletes, award-winning film actors, or senior executives.
This came after speculation about how her parents also obtained permanent residency in the United States and whether it was through the family reunification process that Trump wanted to eliminate and which he described as “chain migration.”
