Melania Really Doesn't Care [View all]

[Passages]

Her new memoir is a master class in how selective attention and empathy can insulate someone from the pains that trouble the rest of us.

By Sophie Gilbert

October 10, 2024, 7:06 AM ET

A little over 12 years ago, Melania Trump logged on to Twitter, uploaded a picture of a cheery-looking beluga whale, and added the caption, “What is she thinking?” The tweet was classic Melania, which is to say that it was cryptic, minimalist, and only lightly in focus. Unlike her husband, Melania Trump undershares on social media—if she isn’t there to hawk baffling NFT collectibles or patriotic Christmas ornaments, she doesn’t typically have much to say. But over the past few weeks, as she’s soft-launched her new memoir, Melania has been posting a series of short videos, each one its own inscrutable puzzle. Mistily obscured through what seems to be a Vaseline-smeared camera lens, she gives brief statements on subjects including cancel culture, her immediate attraction to “Donald,” and her apparent belief in a woman’s right to choose. Her head is stiffly tilted, her gaze steadfast. As she talks, a string section in the background pulses with momentum, as though these clips are actually trailers for the climactic final season of a show called America!


What is she thinking? First ladies, by the cursed nature of the role, are supposed to humanize and soften the jagged, ugly edge of power. The job is to be maternal, quietly decorative, fascinating but not frivolous, busy but not bold. In some ways, Melania Trump—elegant, enigmatic, and apparently unambitious—arrived in Washington better suited to the office than any other presidential spouse in recent memory. In reality, she ended up feeling like a void—a literal absence from the White House for the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency—that left so much room for projection. When she seemed to glower at her husband’s back on Inauguration Day, some decided that she was desperate for an exit, prompting the #FreeMelania hashtag. When she wore a vibrant-pink pussy-bow blouse to a presidential debate mere days after the Access Hollywood tape leaked, the garment was interpreted by some as a statement of solidarity with women, and by others as a defiant middle finger to his critics. Most notoriously, during the months in 2018 when the Trump administration removed more than 5,000 babies and children from their parents at the U.S. border, Melania wore a jacket emblazoned with the words I really don’t care, do u? on the plane to visit some of those children, the discourse over which rivaled the scrutiny of one of the cruelest American policies of the modern era.


Would-be Melaniaologists have had mere scraps to work with over the years, which is why the announcement of her memoir in July was a surprise. Like the British Royal Family, the former first lady prefers to never complain, never explain, and instead glide imposingly through crisis, a swan in a swamp. Does she care? Having read the roughly 200 pages of Melania that aren’t given over to photos, I think I can say that she does not. In fact, she appears to have turned not caring into its own superpower, focusing rigidly on who or what pleases her (beauty; her son, Barron; blockchain ventures) and filtering out virtually everything else. The book contains no mention of Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, the Access Hollywood tape, E. Jean Carroll, the felony conviction of her husband for falsifying business records. Trump’s first impeachment gets about one page, compared with about four devoted to Melania’s failed caviar-based skin-care brand from 2013. Her stepchildren merit just one direct mention. If the book contains any insight into Melania, it’s in how meticulously she seems to have curated a reality for herself that’s free from trouble, anxiety, or introspection. She’s untouchable, insulated from care and responsibility by her extremely selective focus and distractingly ornamental prose.

So why write a book at all? My guess would be: As someone who seems to so dislike other people profiting from her name that—according to the former CNN journalist Kate Bennett’s book, Free, Melania—souvenirs sold in her hometown are reportedly branded only with M or first lady to deter lawsuits, she wanted her own monetized effort on shelves next to the unauthorized biographies and torrid tell-alls. “As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation,” she writes in the brief introduction, “I feel a responsibility to set the record straight and to provide the actual account of my experiences.” What follows is—with the exception of her writing on abortion rights—highly predictable, and as airbrushed as a Vogue cover. Her memories of Election Night 2016 are of her husband emerging as “a unifying leader … [who] recognized the need for healing and unity in America.” Her childhood in Slovenia is idyllic, with two loving parents, a private nanny who bakes cakes frosted with “handmade sugar flowers,” and “cherished” family holidays on the Dalmatian coast. The prose is lavish by way of LinkedIn: Melania’s grandfather, a shoemaker and an onion farmer, “wasted no time in pursuing his passion for agriculture”; her mother, a patternmaker in a children’s-clothing factory, “was the artisan behind the scenes … thriving in the world of fashion.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/10/melania-trump-memoir-review/680209/?gift=z70s7ttKskppsRsCp84x4siw_goasftJZ_PGk1X1lko&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share


Nauseating