5 takeaways from Melania Trump’s book

WASHINGTON — Melania Trump’s new memoir offers a few new glimpses into a life she has carefully walled off from the public, but readers hoping to understand one of the most mysterious first ladies in modern history will not make it past the gilded front gate.

First ladies write memoirs because they want to be understood. (The hefty contract doesn’t hurt, either.) Hillary Clinton wrote about her husband’s affair with an intern and the poisonous political process that followed. Michelle Obama revealed that she was angrier with her husband’s critics — one in particular — than she had ever let on while he was in office. Laura Bush used her book to voice her support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

It is almost as if they must survive the role before they can write about it.

But in Trump’s telling, her time as first lady was largely smooth sailing. Her book, an early copy of which was obtained by the New York Times before its release next week, does not reveal her to harbor differing views from her husband, beyond her support for abortion rights.

In fact, her grievances — with the news media, with “the opposition” and with aides she believes failed her and her husband — sound a lot like her husband’s, only dressed up in couture.

Here are five takeaways.

The big revelation is that she supports abortion rights.

Trump made headlines this week when a reported excerpt from her book revealed that she supported abortion rights — a notable position given that her husband appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn a constitutional right to the procedure.

“A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” Trump writes. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.”

Trump also voices support for certain abortions performed later in pregnancy, saying many cases are “extremely rare” and calling for “common-sense standards.”

This is the most surprising opinion she expresses. Others are more in line with conservative orthodoxy, including her belief that transgender women should stay out of women’s sports. “Male bodies generally have physical advantages,” she writes.

At other points in the book, it becomes clear that Trump viewed some of the most tumultuous moments of the Trump presidency from a privileged perch.

She blames “the inflammatory rhetoric of Black Lives Matter leaders” for the protests and riots that broke out after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. (She does not name Floyd, referring to him as a “Black Minneapolis resident.”)

She recalls watching unruly protests outside the White House in May 2020, and the several hours that followed with her husband spent deep underground in a bunker, writing that she had “never anticipated needing to use the bunker to seek refuge from a crowd of aggrieved protesters.” She says that being escorted out of the residence frustrated her, and notes that her personal and work phones became permanently inoperable after visiting the bunker.

She explains why she did not denounce the Jan. 6 violence.

For every moment that Trump has appeared to veer away from her husband, there is another where she echoes his beliefs. The 2020 election is no exception.

Her husband has spent years railing against his loss to President Joe Biden and, as recently this week, falsely claiming that the process was rigged.

In her book, Trump puts a softer focus on the same belief by questioning why it took so long for the election to be decided.

“You can’t continue to count votes for days, which is what they did,” Trump writes, ignoring the reality of how the country tallies millions of ballots. “It was a mess. Many Americans still have doubts about the election to this day. I am not the only person who questions the results.”

Even the parts of her book that are meant to showcase her legacy are clouded by postelection unrest, largely prompted by her husband.

In detailing her yearslong commitment to restoring rooms in the White House — one of the most significant contributions she made as first lady — Trump writes that she was busy reviewing restorations when her husband’s supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

She writes that she declined to denounce the violence because her press secretary at the time — an unnamed Stephanie Grisham — did not give her the full details of what was happening. Trump writes that “my team was already behind schedule and focused on the task.”

An attack on her son, Barron, fueled her ‘Be Best’ campaign.

Shortly after the 2016 election, one of the new president’s most vocal critics, comedian Rosie O’Donnell, posted speculation on social media that his youngest son and Trump’s only child, Barron, had autism. He was 10 years old at the time.

What followed was a social media hailstorm that prompted O’Donnell to apologize. Trump, who says in the book that Barron does not have autism, writes that the episode motivated her to center her child-focused initiative, Be Best, on the issues of childhood welfare and online bullying.

She writes, presciently, that she was “taken aback by the resistance I encountered from tech executives” from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Snapchat when she convened leaders at the White House in March 2018 to talk about childhood safety online. Eight years later, social media platforms are still struggling to put in place tools to protect children.

And Trump is still furious at O’Donnell.

“Barron’s experience of being bullied both online and in real life following the incident is a clear indication of the irreparable damage caused,” she writes. “No apology can undo the harm inflicted upon him.”

She explains (sort of) the Jacket and the Hand Swat.

There are two episodes in Trump’s tenure as first lady that were so explosive and confounding that they can be referred to in shorthand: There was the Jacket, the incident in June 2018 when she wore a jacket with the words “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” while on a trip to visit migrant children in Texas.

And there was the Swat, the time she slapped her husband’s hand away from hers while on a trip to Israel in 2017.

She writes in the book that she swatted his hand away because he was walking in front of her with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara. “The red carpet simply could not accommodate four of us abreast,” she writes. “It was a minor innocent gesture, nothing more.”

She has much more to say about the events leading up to her decision to wear the jacket. She blames Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, and not her husband for overseeing a family separation policy that led to thousands of migrant children being taken away from their parents at the southern border.

Trump recalls reading as much as she could about the separations before approaching her husband and lobbying him in private.

“The government should not be taking children away from their parents,” she says she told him. “This has to stop.” He promised her he would look into the matter, and, soon after, signed an executive order ending the separations.

The decision to wear the jacket, she said, was to get back at the news media for its “skewed narratives” and “negativity.”

Throughout a book that jumps back and forth in place and time, one constant is the grudge Trump has developed against the news media. It took root during the 2016 campaign, when journalists reported on her past work as a nude model. She sued a writer who suggested without evidence that she had once worked as an escort.

“We are living in a dangerous time when it comes to journalism,” Trump writes.

She talks about her marriage, but omits the scandals.

Readers of this book will learn that both Trumps love Elton John. They will learn that Trump doted on her husband and urged him to go to the hospital when he was sick with COVID-19. They will learn that the Trumps exchange letters with King Charles III as part of what Trump says is a friendly relationship.

They will also learn that Trump was sometimes invited by her husband for a close-up view of some of the most consequential moments of his presidency, as when he invited her into the Situation Room to watch the military’s raid on Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“Watch this incredible action at work,” he told her as they watched the operation unfold onscreen.

Readers will not get a better understanding of how Trump was feeling in 2018, when it was reported that her husband had paid off a porn actor to keep quiet about an affair that happened shortly after Barron was born. (She was furious.) There is no mention of an episode shortly before the 2016 election, when leaked audio from an appearance by Trump’s husband on “Access Hollywood” revealed him bragging about grabbing women by their genitals. (She was not very happy then, either.)

Instead, in passage after passage throughout the book, readers will come to understand that Trump sees her husband as the victim of attacks by powerful forces seeking to bring him down. It all sounds familiar.

Her memoir, cloaked in a matte, black cover, has just one blurb on the back from an enthusiastic reviewer: “Melania’s commitment to excellence starts with her family,” former President Donald Trump writes, “which Barron and I cherish deeply.”