Donald and Melania Trump’s Marriage, Once Frosty, Has Warmed Again and She Calms Him Down, New Book Says
An upcoming biography of Melania Trump says that the first lady is a calming presence around President Donald Trump and that observers in the White House have watched their relationship warm up again.
The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, by Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan, plays on the title of the president’s 1987 memoir and business advice book, The Art of the Deal.
Jordan’s book, reviewed by the Post ahead of its June 16 release, says Melania was in no rush to move into the White House following her husband’s inauguration.
While she said she initially stayed in Manhattan to not interrupt their then-10-year-old son Barron’s school year, the book says Melania used her delayed arrival to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement with Trump.
According to three people close to Trump, Melania wanted to renegotiate the agreement to secure Barron’s future inheritance and ensure that he would be treated the same as Trump’s three oldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, Jordan writes.
Melania had apparently been unaware of sexual misconduct allegations against Trump, which came out during her husband’s campaign, and her lengthy marriage had earned her bargaining power for a renegotiation, the book says. Melania and Trump have been married for 15 years, outlasting the duration of his two previous marriages.
Jordan reports that at least one of Trump’s older children urged Melania to move to Washington, D.C., as soon as possible because of her ability to calm down the president.
The first lady’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, disputed the accuracy of Jordan’s biography. “Yet another book about Mrs. Trump with false information and sources. This book belongs in the fiction genre,” Grisham told Newsweek.
The 286-page deeply reported book, which consists of more than 100 interviews, says that the foreign-born first lady is as dedicated to mythmaking as Trump is. Many of her public claims, including her bachelor’s degree from Slovenia’s University of Ljubljana and her ability to speak five languages, are contradicted by Jordan’s interviews with Melania’s Slovenian classmates, photographers from New York and others who know the former model.
“They are both fighters and survivors and prize loyalty over almost all else…. Neither the very public Trump nor the very private Melania has many close friends. Their loner instincts filter into their own marriage,” Jordan writes.
In the book, Trump associate Roger Stone credits Melania as the one who ultimately pushed him to run for president. She is also said to have played a key role in Trump’s decision to choose Mike Pence as his running mate.
“She believed that he would be content in a number-two spot and not gun for the top job,” Jordan writes, “which was something she could not say about the other two [vice presidential candidates].”
Jordan reports that after renegotiating her prenuptial agreement to ensure Barron’s inheritance, Melania had a change in mood that has led to her willingness to encourage her husband to run for re-election.
Source: newsweek.com
