As Donald Trump returns to the White House for his second term as president, so does his wife — former fashion model and reluctant First Lady, Melania Trump.
Melania’s first stint in the White House was marred with gaffes and accusations of failing First Lady-ship. When Trump first moved into the official residence in Washington back in 2016, Melania wasn’t even present most of the time, instead opting to stay in New York with their young son, Barron Trump.
She seemed reluctant to perform the typical tasks required of her position, and was sometimes entirely absent during crucial political moments (like during the January 6 riots, when she was at a photoshoot for a rug, or Trump’s assassination attempt, which she watched on TV from a different state). This summer, her absence reached new heights, prompting articles asking “Where is Melania?”, despite her husband being on a highly publicised campaign trail.
Second time around, people are saying things will be different. And so is Melania. In an interview with Fox & Friends on January 13, she explained: "I feel I was always me the first time [as First Lady] as well. I just feel that people didn’t accept me maybe, they didn’t understand me the way they maybe do now. I didn’t have much support." As for this term? “It will be an exciting four years. We have a lot to do,” she said.
In the meantime, let’s look back on some of her most controversial moments from the past few years.
1. Disagreeing with Trump on abortion rights
Even if Melania Trump’s so-called “memoir” offered little extra insight into the inner workings of her mind, it did reveal something pretty notable: Melania is pro-choice. This comes as quite a surprise considering how Donald Trump called for the decision to overturn Roe V. Wade, then later described the tightening of abortion restrictions across multiple states as “a beautiful thing to watch.”
But in her book, Melania makes it clear that she doesn’t agree with such measures. "It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government," the book reads.
“A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”
Both Melania and Donald Trump have received backlash against her comments from the prominent anti-abortion side of Trump’s fanbase. The former president defended his wife’s comments on Fox News, saying: “We spoke about it. And I said, you have to write what you believe.”
2. Her redesign of the White House rose garden
There is no better visual metaphor for Melania Trump’s stint in the White House than her redesign of the historic rose garden: taut, minimalist and divisive. While the rose bushes of White House garden’s past have tended to sprawl out into the lawn in a cascade of brightly coloured flora, Melania’s take on the rose garden was shaped into thin, neat lines with minimal colour.
Her redesign prompted a huge backlash, including a public shaming from presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss, who said: “Evisceration of White House Rose Garden was completed a year ago this month, and here was the grim result — decades of American history made to disappear.”
Melania was even accused of ripping out the rose bushes of every First Lady before her, though a fact checker proved this to be incorrect, and more colourful roses did later come into bloom. Nevertheless, people were angry. When Jill Biden eventually took over as FLOTUS, restorationists called for her to revert Melania’s changed and restore the rose garden back to its “former glory”.
3. When she wanted people to ‘give her a f***ing break’ over Trump’s child separation policies
Another FLOTUS task comes in the form of The White House’s Christmas decorations, a task which Melania apparently found very taxing back in 2018. During this period, Donald Trump was under fire for his policy of separating children from their families who illegally crossed the southern border. Melania started taking some of the heat, too, which distressed her greatly — what with all the Christmas decorating that needed to be done.
In a secret recording obtained by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania’s former friend and senior adviser, Melania can be heard complaining about the backlash to the policy and the lack of respect for her role. “I’m working [...] my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?” she says in the recording.
“OK, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f****** break.”
4. When she wore a jacket that said ‘I don’t really care, do u?’ to visit detained children
Around the same period, Melania went to visit one of the child detention centres where children had been separated from their parents at the southern border. The centre she visited in June of 2018 housed 55 children, including some who were directly impacted by the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy towards illegal immigration, isolating them from their families.
For the occasion, she donned a $39 Zara jacket that bore the words “I don’t really care, do u?” on the back. It attracted a mass of criticism and spawned a thousand think pieces. At the time, Trump said the jacket was a message to the "Fake News Media", while Melania’s comms chief said it was "just a jacket".
See also: Who is in Donald Trump's top team?
Melania later confirmed that it was a message, though it wasn’t aimed at the children of the detainment centre she was visiting. “It's obvious I didn't wear the jacket for the children, I wore the jacket to go on the plane and off the plane," she said in an interview with ABC News in October 2018.
“It was for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticising me. I want to show them I don't care. You could criticise whatever you want to say. But it will not stop me to do what I feel is right.”
Ironically, the outfit Melania wore for this interview with ABC News later also went viral due to her clothing choices. She was being interviewed in Kenya, as part of a safari trip where she had chosen to wear a colonial-style pith helmet, an item heavily associated with colonial rule.
5. When she was accused of plagiarising Michelle Obama’s DNC speech
During the Republican National Convention in 2016, Melania Trump took to the stage and delivered a rousing speech. Cheers went up from the waiting crowd. All seemed fine. A win for Team Melania, even. Apart from the fact that her speech bore a marked resemblance to Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech.
In some moments, Melania Trump repeated Michelle Obama’s exact phrasing. For example, at one point, Melania said: “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
While, eight years earlier, Michelle Obama had said: “[...] we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.”
At the time, Trump’s team denied all similarities and instead claimed the backlash was spin by Hillary Clinton’s team. “There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech,” claimed Paul Manafort, Mr Trump's campaign manager. “I mean, this is, once again, an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down.”
However, Melania later admitted to being inspired by Michelle Obama’s speech in her memoir, though she blamed the “undeniable similarities” on her scriptwriting team. While accusing the campaign team of “fail[ing] to implement even the most fundamental safeguard,” she asks, “Why was the speech not vetted?”
She added: “Looking back, I realized that I had relied too much on others in this crucial endeavor.”
