Melania Trump book - The Art of Her Deal

[lpetrich]

I'm catching up on "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump", a book released last June.

Melania Trump was in no rush to move into the White House. That’s when she renegotiated her prenup, a new book says. - The Washington Post

When Melania Trump stayed behind in New York after her husband’s presidential inauguration, she said it was because she didn’t want to interrupt their then-10-year-old son Barron’s school year. News stories at the time concentrated on an apparent frostiness between the first couple and on the exorbitant taxpayer costs to protect Melania and Barron away from Washington.

Those stories are true, but Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan reveals in a new book that the first lady was also using her delayed arrival to the White House as leverage for renegotiating her prenuptial agreement with President Trump.

Doesn't seem like they get along all that well.

Author Mary Jordan "lays out an argument that Melania Trump is as devoted to her own mythmaking as her husband is to his."

“Both are avid creators of their own history,” Jordan writes, arguing that the #FreeMelania hashtag ought to be retired because of her consistent support of her husband and her moves to stay in the White House.

“She is . . . much more like him than it appears,” Jordan adds.

...
The mythmaking, Jordan writes, began early, when she would fail to correct reporters who cited her age incorrectly, always younger than she was. Despite saying she wouldn’t get plastic surgery, three photographers who worked with her said they have seen the scars.

 

[lpetrich]

As to her claims that she can speak 4 or 5 languages,

“Photographers and others who have worked with her over the years — including native speakers of Italian, French, and German — told me that they never heard her use more than a few words of those languages,” Jordan writes. Reporting in the book suggests she speaks only English and Slovene fluently.

Her native language and the one of her present home. Is Melania Trump really fluent in five languages? - YouTube - John Aravosis looks for evidence, and he fails to find any. She met some French and Italian schoolchildren and said some greetings, complete with a grammatical mistake for the Italian one: singular instead of plural. But she did not use any more of either languages. JA could not find *any* videos of her speaking German.

The ease of Melania’s mythmaking has been aided, Jordan posits, by a pattern in her life of making clean breaks with her past. Old friends from Slovenia said they never heard from her again. Once-close friends from her New York City years say the same thing happened to them.

She “would seize an opportunity and put great effort into it. Then she would move on and never look back,” Jordan writes.

She and her husband even have separate bedrooms.

"What emerges is a picture of personal ambition similar to Trump’s."

 

[lpetrich]

Melania Trump 'The Art of Her Deal' book excerpt: How the first lady blocked Ivanka Trump from encroaching on her domain - The Washington Post - some office space in the White House, it seems.

The Art of Her Deal | Book by Mary Jordan | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster - publisher's site

The picture of Melania Trump that emerges in The Art of Her Deal is one of a woman who is savvy, steely, ambitious, deliberate, and who plays the long game. And while it is her husband who became famous for the phrase “the art of the deal,” it is she who has consistently used her leverage to get exactly what she wants. This is the story of the art of her deal.

'The Art Of Her Deal' Aims To Show Melania Trump As An Influential Collaborator : NPR
Though one who stays out of sight.


Book review of The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan - The Washington Post

The Melania she presents is sympathetic occasionally, but not always. She is enigmatic, glamorous, secretive, strategic, a quiet loner and master compartmentalizer who made her deal with the devil and made it work because in many ways, deep down, she and Trump are cut from the same shiny cloth. Truth serves their own purposes, not the other way around.

...
Unearthing that history took years, Jordan says, her reporting stymied by the Trumps’ aggressive attempts to erase her past. It took more than 120 interviews in five countries for this portrait to emerge — and it still leaves much unsaid.

 

[lpetrich]

A New Book Brings Melania Trump Into (Slightly) Better Focus - The New York Times

Melania’s remoteness prompts a cri de coeur from the author. “In three decades as a correspondent working all over the world, I have often written about the reluctant and the reclusive, including the head of a Mexican drug cartel and a Japanese princess, but nothing compared to trying to understand Melania,” Jordan writes.

“Most people I spoke to would not speak on the record. Many in the Trump world are governed by NDAs (nondisclosure agreements). Some had been warned by lawyers, family members and others close to Melania not to speak publicly about her, and many would talk only on the same encrypted phone apps used by spies and others in the intelligence community. Old photos that were once an easy Google search away no longer pop up online.”

Melania allegedly calls Ivanka "Princess" and Ivanka allegedly calls Melania "Portrait", from how little she speaks.

 

[Bronzeage]

There is no reason to think Melania is anything more or less than she appears to be. She met Donald Trump as his fire was beginning to burn out. He needed a new trophy wife, and having exhausted the domestic supply, she had the qualities he desired. She has a beauty which appeals to some and she was willing to put up with his bullshit. I'm sure she had no idea that a four year nightmare was part of the deal, but then, no one else saw that coming either. All in all, she's been a pretty good sport about the whole thing.

She'll probably hang on a few more years, at least until Baron is in college. Let's assume he gets into a college and once he's out of the Tower, she will be too.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Who knew marrying for money could backfire this badly, by Melania Trump

 

[J842P]

I'm shocked at the accusation that the supermodel who married the TV billionaire is a social climbing self-promoter.

You people are so cynical.

 

[Treedbear]

I'm shocked at the accusation that the supermodel who married the TV billionaire is a social climbing self-promoter.

You people are so cynical.

You have to start somewhere.

 

[TomC]

I'm shocked at the accusation that the supermodel who married the TV billionaire is a social climbing self-promoter.

You people are so cynical.

You have to start somewhere.

Tell that to the other millions of recent immigrants.

"If you have a model's face and great boobs you're Welcome to America.

If not, well, sorry."

Tom

 

[Treedbear]

I'm shocked at the accusation that the supermodel who married the TV billionaire is a social climbing self-promoter.

You people are so cynical.

You have to start somewhere.

Tell that to the other millions of recent immigrants.

"If you have a model's face and great boobs you're Welcome to America.

If not, well, sorry."

Tom

Sarcasm Tom. It was sarcasm. That there's a market for cynicism, which Melania would need to have in spades if she's married to Donald.