On April 9, Melania Trump held a lone press conference. She showed up in a charcoal suit, delivered a speech and turned to exit, runway style, without pausing. Melania doesn’t take questions from the press.
The facts, according to Melania: Jeffrey Epstein had not introduced her to Donald Trump. She met her husband, “by chance, at a New York City party, in 1998.” She and her husband were acquainted with Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, but this was “common in New York City and Palm Beach.” She had engaged Maxwell in polite “casual correspondence” over email. That was the extent of the relationship. “I am not Epstein’s victim,” she said somberly. White House staff were perplexed.
Why had the presser been called? There have been growing rumors that Paolo Zampolli – the modeling agent Melania credits with encouraging her to move to the United States – may have used his ties to the Trumps to have his ex-partner Amanda Ungaro deported. How this might have been related to Epstein is unclear. Alan Dershowitz, Trump and Epstein’s former lawyer, told me: “My own speculation is that she heard that there was going to be some terrible lie that’s going to come out, and she preempted it and she got in front of it.”
Speculation and conspiracy fill the void; some have even theorized she is an Israeli spy
I asked what kind of a lie it may be. He said it could be anything. When I asked about Zampolli, Dershowitz said “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Toward the end of her six-minute speech, Melania asked Congress to hold a public hearing for Epstein’s victims. It is striking that this was done without the President beside her. “I didn’t know what the statement was,” President Trump told Shawn McCreesh from the New York Times, “but I knew she was going to make a statement.” Melania’s press conference was not exactly helpful for her husband. Trump has spent the past six months deflecting from the Epstein scandal, which had receded from the news in recent weeks. Yet the President remains deferential about his wife, saying things like, “I could understand her feelings.”
We could understand her feelings too – frustration – even if her English was imperfect. At one point, she said “calculating” when she meant “circulating.” In interviews from the early 2000s, Melania’s English appears to have been better than it does now.
Most reporting about Melania focuses on her absence from public life. She was not present for a single day of Trump’s seven-week hush-money trial in 2024. People imagined her getting massages and drinking martinis while her husband fought allegations of sexual assault and an affair with a porn star. Despite the fact that her legal residence is listed as Palm Beach, Florida, it is widely known that Melania Trump spends most of her time in New York City.
There are a lot of details missing from Melania’s early life. Speculation and conspiracy have filled the void; some have even theorized that the President’s wife is an Israeli spy. Melania has sued the media more than once in attempts to squash unfavorable stories, and frequently sends out letters threatening legal action. I do not, for the record, believe she is a member of Mossad.
The First Lady could have addressed these concerns in Melania, the Amazon film, or Melania, her autobiography. The documentary only focuses on the 20 days leading up to the 2025 inauguration, however. And her book, with its matte black jacket, doesn’t give away many details. It involves large leaps in time and mostly ignores her younger years. She tells us she was a model in Europe, that she met photographer Stane Jerko and Zampolli. She managed to move to New York City with Zampolli’s help, gaining citizenship in 2006.
“She is the First Lady of the United States and nobody knows anything about her,” Michael Wolff, the journalist now engaged in a lawsuit against her, told me over the phone. Melania-watchers I spoke to described her as beautiful, dignified and poised. A reporter who covers Melania regularly told me that “among the MAGA base, she is adored… She truly is a style icon.” Others view her restraint as icy and strange.
I asked Wolff if he thinks there’s any chance Melania really is concerned for Epstein’s victims. After all, she too was a young model and an immigrant from an Eastern European country. “Zero, zero! My God! I mean, you know, she has never shown an ounce of empathy toward anyone, ever. That is a cold, calculating, hollow person. That is the portrait.” But given he is suing her, he isn’t unbiased.
Melania’s communications director is Nick Clemens, a young gay man no one really knows. “That one guy who’s quoted all over the place and who kind of seems to be her handler,” Wolff said. “But who is he? Never heard of him before either.”
I asked Dershowitz whether Epstein and Melania’s relationship went further than her description at the press conference. “When I was Epstein’s lawyer, I said to him… if you can turn in anybody prominent that will help you get a good deal. And he told me he had nothing negative about any of those people…. Not the Trumps, not the Clintons. And he had every motive to say anything… so I’m totally convinced that Melania had no contact with him other than what she said. She’s a truth-telling person.” Others are less sure. There is a DC theory that Melania is upset about events from Trump’s second term and used the conference to take a swipe at him. Wolff thinks it could be a threat, and that “this marriage is one of the leading peculiar aspects of Trump’s political life and rise.”
Does Wolff think Trump is scared of her? “Well, I would be. So who knows what he is. But I certainly would be. I think that she’s a wild card, if not, to switch metaphors, a loose cannon.” There’s a rumor in DC that every time Trump does something she considers crazy, she renegotiates her prenup. Her exit from American public life may prove as mysterious as her entrance.
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