Melania Trump book delves into US first lady’s wardrobe, living arrangements and frosty family relationships
- CNN reporter Kate Bennett’s sympathetic and generally positive portrait of Melania Trump shows a strong woman who won’t be pushed around
- The author claims first lady is ‘way more powerful and influential with her husband’ than the public realises
Melania Trump has a White House suite of her own, is less than chummy with first daughter Ivanka, and uses her wardrobe to make statements, a new biography of the US first lady says.
Free, Melania, an unauthorised look at President Donald Trump’s wife by CNN reporter Kate Bennett, is published on Tuesday and Washington was buzzing about its contents ahead of its release.
At 49, and three years into her husband’s administration, the Slovenia-born ex-model remains genuinely private and “mysterious” to much of the public, while acutely aware of all that is said about her and her husband, says Bennett.
But she is hardly the docile third wife of an extremely powerful man accused of being a serial womaniser, the author writes. Instead, Melania is prepared to let her husband know what she thinks – and to use her sharp elbows when she feels slighted.
The first lady is “way more powerful and influential with her husband” than the public knows, Bennett says. The author confirms reports last year that Melania was responsible for the firing of a senior White House national security official, Mira Ricardel, after the first lady felt slighted during an October 2018 trip to Africa.