White House marriages invariably take on meanings larger than themselves. They project a set of values, both moral and political. They provide a sense of stability.
We assume they function in the same ways as our own, with good days and bad – a shared domestic experience that we like to have in common with our leaders.
Most of the time, anyway.
For, despite all its glaring anomalies and strangeness, a media not usually shy from prying has largely refrained from asking questions about the marriage of Donald and Melania Trump.
In 2021, when I was writing my last book about the Trump presidency, ‘Landslide’, I attended a dinner on the Mar-a-Lago terrace hosted by the former president and first lady.
They behaved as though they were the bride and groom at a wedding, each greeting an endless stream of well-wishers who approached our table throughout the evening, but without much evident conversation or even familiarity with each other.
On Sunday, at Madison Square Garden, just nine days before the election, Melania made her first, and last, speaking appearance on the campaign trail for her husband.
On Sunday, at Madison Square Garden, just nine days before the election, Melania Trump made her first, and last, speaking appearance on the campaign trail for her husband.
After she welcomed him to the stage in New York, he gave her a stiff-armed double-cheek air kiss. She, it appeared, could not keep her face far enough away.
‘It might have been a negotiated appearance,’ a member of the Trump inner circle observed to me this week. ‘Doubtful right up until the last moment.’
Melania has not, otherwise, in almost two years of active campaigning, shown up for her husband in any significant way on the campaign trail – a burdensome duty, to be sure, but a basic prerequisite of a political wife.
She has only hosted two private Republican fundraisers. Her appearance at this summer’s Republican National Convention was minimal to say the least. She arrived on the final night and was only seated in the VIP box after her husband had left it.
After his speech, she appeared on stage with the rest of the Trump clan, greeting him with another uncomfortable kiss.
It is equally de rigueur for any politician hauled into court to have his wife beside him. Since his 2024 campaign began, Donald Trump has been before more courts, as both a criminal and civil defendant, than any politician in American history. But his wife has never been by his side.
It is entirely possible that, instead of this being a glaring public rebuke, there could be a kinder interpretation here: Melania doing her own thing, busy with her own work and interests.
But it is hard to believe that explanation when so many of the trials Trump has faced have been about his sex life.
The allegations include sexual abuse, of course, and an affair with a porn star that’s said to have taken place soon after Melania gave birth to their son Barron. So it is perhaps easier to surmise that her refusal to attend these trials had more to do with maintaining a sense of dignity.
And yet, her obvious distance and clear lack of support was, once again, hardly questioned by the media. In this, it seems, the Trumps are granted special dispensation.
Perhaps such kid-glove treatment has always been true of the rich.
After all, we don’t expect their domestic lives to be like ours. The marriages of the wealthy, the jet set and the celebrated are different. On a basic level, they have more real estate and so they can naturally – sometimes conveniently – keep a distance from one another.
If there is any First Lady who Melania seems to model herself after, it is Jacqueline Kennedy, another beautiful, elusive woman whose marriage was – at least while JFK was alive – not readily discussed.
From the beginning of the Trump presidency, the question of where Melania spends most of her time has never been wholly answered.
In 2017, it took nearly six months for her to move from her New York apartment into the White House – a startling exception in the history of presidential domestic arrangements.
This was explained at the time as being for the benefit of Barron, who was still in school in New York City — though the Trumps would hardly have been the first presidential couple to have switched their child’s school mid-year. Washington schools are particularly pleased to accommodate a president’s children.
Melania has not, otherwise, shown up for her husband in any significant way on the 2024 campaign trail. Her appearance at this summer’s Republican National Convention (pictured) was minimal to say the least.
In 2017, it took nearly six months for her to move from her New York apartment into the White House. This was explained at the time as being for the benefit of Barron.
Even after Melania arrived in Washington, it was never exactly clear how much time she and Barron spent at the White House – or away from it with her parents, who had relocated nearby.
Similarly, in the years since the Trump presidency, Melania’s presence at Mar-a-Lago has often seemed to be more ‘event’ than commonplace.
One Trump insider who is frequently with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, recently told me that Melania seems to be treated more like a guest there.
And now, as the prospect looms of a second go-round in the White House for The Donald, Melania is said once again to be expressing reservations about life in Washington. It has been claimed that she feels it will be important for her to be near her now college-aged son, attending New York University.
Quietly, the Trump team is said to be trying out a new nomenclature: ‘part-time first lady’.
Does it matter? Should it matter? Do we have the right to know?
As far as his supporters are concerned, the picture of the Trump marriage – that he is charismatic and virile enough to have a beautiful model, a quarter-century younger, on his arm – is another part of the Trump mythology that they would rather leave undisturbed.