Melania: A Review

By Armando Simón

I bought Melania, Mrs. Trump’s autobiography, for my wife as one of her Christmas presents. Like myself, I admire the First Lady’s breathtaking outfits, her obvious beauty, and because she and their son had been the target of the most vile, disgusting hatred by liberals. One latte-sipping, cocaine-snorting Hollywood celebrity had wished for her son to be locked in a cage full of child rapists (something he may have seen while participating in one of Diddy’s parties). And several harpies had made the snarky comment the outfit she wore in Egypt (a white suit) was identical to that of a Nazi in one of the Indiana Jones movies; a similar pathetic claim was made about one of her outfits in the recent inauguration. Recently, when liberals attacked RFK jr.’s family, Bill Maher pointed out the obvious lack of decency, “Going after the wife? Even the Mafia doesn’t do that!”

So, I eagerly read the book, certain she would illuminate many of the internal details that we saw of an administration under siege by totalitarian fanatics. From a historian’s standpoint, I was starving for those details, similar to those I read in Peter Navarro’s book.

I was wrong. It was a disappointment. Leaving aside her upbringing and her work as a well-established model, her narration of the White House years was banal. It was a tedious narration of her decorating the White House (the sections that are allowed to be redecorated), a superficial detailing of her travels and visits to various institutions, overall, a cascade of trivia and platitudes. In short, the book is the equivalent of a chick flick.

I had hoped that Melania would at least comment on the fact that, while Michelle Obama was in office, Michelle graced the cover of numerous magazines. I remember seeing a new picture of Mrs. Obama in yet another magazine. At one point, I expected her to grace the cover of Popular Mechanics. But magazines never asked Mrs. Trump to pose—Melania, a well-established, professional model? If she had expected to be invited, she did not mention it in the book.

To be sure, I suppose this is due to her philosophy of life where she says she has never bothered to bog down in refutations of bullying or snide remarks and the like, she just shrugs them off, which is antithetical to someone who is combative like myself.

However, it is different when it comes to her son. Early on in the book, Melania mentions her outrage when a has-been actress named Rosie O’Donnel claimed Barron was autistic and was, in turn, successfully sued by the First Lady, but it merited only one page. Later, she complains about the hostility of the media directed toward her and her husband, particularly in the media’s tactic of spreading lies by citing “a confidential source” (nothing that we did not already know).

It is toward the near end of the book that some of important events are touched on, but the details are infuriatingly few. She mentions, for instance, when BLM savages, outraged because a career criminal had been killed by a policeman, attempted to assault the White House, and the Secret Service ordered everyone to vacate to the bunker. She mentions—briefly—only one of the impeachments. As to the 2020 election, she points out Media Research Center found that 94% of the media coverage of Trump had been negative, and one sentence that there was something suspicious about the election, an understatement if there ever was one.

After leaving the White House, she mentioned five instances of banks with which she had done business with for years canceling her and her son’s account (a relatively new tactic of persecution by totalitarians) and her scheduled speaking at events likewise canceled. Again, we are left thirsting for details.

When her family’s home was invaded by the FBI and their belongings ransacked for hours by strangers, they felt violated. “A raid on a former president’s house, on our home?” And, “I was fully aware of the lengths to which my husband’s political adversaries might go, but this development was an unprecedented low.”

But that was it.

Armando Simón is the author of The Book of Many Books.