As Londoners landed at their desks for 9am, the race for the White House had already seen Republican candidate Donald Trump secure the nearly 270 votes he needed to win presidency over Kamala Harris.
Addressing supporters in Florida’s West Palm Beach he claimed he has won a “magnificent victory for the American people” and promised “the golden age of America.” He was joined on stage by wife Melania and son Barron, aged 18.
To cast her vote in their home state, Melania wore the same Christian Dior dress she had worn to promote her new self-titled memoir in her September, in an interview on Fox News. It was paired with an oversized pair of sunglasses. And it didn’t take online conspiracists long to reignite ‘fakeMelania’ rhetoric online — which dates back to 2017 during his previous tenure as president — suggesting a body double had been sent to the event in her place.
“This is absolutely, categorically not Melania,” one X user wrote emphatically during the streaming of Trump and Melania in Florida. “This imposter’s been wearing sunglasses indoors all day,” they added.
“Having to trot out the fake Melania on election day is pretty embarrassing,” wrote another. Others went as far as to claim that she appeared to have a different bone structure, putting photos of her side by side.
While these conspiracists operate in niche corners of the internet, their sentiment isn’t actually that far removed from some more mainstream and often liberals’ beliefs about Melania. In suggesting that the ‘real’ Melania is such an unwilling participant in electoral duties that she’s having to be replaced by a ‘fake’, they’re echoing a wider prevailing narrative: that she doesn’t want to be a part of Trump’s campaign or comply with the traditional role of FLOTUS. Indeed, the subject of whether Melania would move into the White House if Trump were elected again has been a subject of investigation for weeks.
Rewind to when Trump was elected as the US’s 45th president and Melania famously kept a low profile during her husband’s controversial stint. She didn’t move into the White House until five months after her husband, when her son had finished his school year.
In spite of Barron now being 18-years-old and in his first year of studies at New York University, it is thought that Melania will again take up living arrangements to stay close to him and split her time with her current home in Palm Beach over living full-time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
A source which People Magazine claim is close to Trump told the title earlier this month: “If Melania becomes first lady again, of course people expect her to move into the White House and perform appropriate duties.” Yet they said of whether she will move to the official home of the president: “she will have her private living apartment there, and she has her home in New York, and her home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.” They added: “she will spend time in all of these places.”
On the potential First Lady’s plans for the role, they elaborated: “if her husband is elected, she will attend the White House functions that she is asked to attend just as she always has. Melania knows what to do, yet has a mind of her own.”
Indeed, speaking ahead of her husband being elected the first time, she told CNN regarding the possibility of becoming FLOTUS: “I will be me. I will be different than any other first ladies.”
As her husband’s second POTUS campaign trail played out it was clear Melania would again move (or rather appear in public) to the beat of her own drum — and alongside promoting her book. Prior to election day she was seen twice, once for an appearance in her hometown of Palm Beach at a polling station event in May, and then at his Madison Square Garden rally at the end of October. Though after the latter she became the subject of many headlines by taking an interview with Fox News, which was her first in two years, to discuss her book.
While she did speak in defense of Trump, with lines direct from his campaign playbook (”all he wants to do, as he says, is make America great again”) and of the assassination attempt on him in July (”a horrible, distressing experience”), she also went into rare detail about her modelling career, her relationship to her son Barron, and spoke of her approach to being part of a blended family (alluding to Trump’s four children from previous marriages).
Of her modelling career, the 54-year-old said it had prepared for her for a life of scrutiny: “I think nothing prepared me more to be first lady in front of the world than the fashion industry. The fashion industry is glamorous but, at the same time, it’s very tough. Everybody judges you. Looks at you a certain way. So, it can be mean world as well. So, nothing prepared me more for this world than fashion. It gives you a thick skin.”
And it was clear from this conversation that Barron (who many have observed is, like Gary Barlow’s son: much, much taller than his father) is Melania’s priority.
Of his uni days she said: “He wants to be in New York and study in New York and live in his home. And I respect that. He’s an incredible young man. I’m very proud of what he grow up to [become]. His strength, his intelligence. His knowledge. His kindness. He’s enjoying his college days. I hope he will have a great experience because his life is very different than any other 18, 19-year-old child.”
Though, as the source shared with People Magazine, it’s likely she will be respecting him from a distance, by keeping a part-time home nearby. “Her son, who is more important to her than anything else,” the source told the publication.
Barron is also a topic Melania speaks candidly about in passages from her book, Melania — which is released on 8 October in the UK. She recalls when comedian Rosie O’Donnell posted on social media suggesting that the then 10-year-old was autistic, linking to a video of him shown at various events.
“I was appalled by such cruelty,” she writes. “It was clear to me that she was not interested in raising awareness about autism. I felt that she was attacking my son because she didn’t like my husband.” She says that although “there is nothing shameful about autism”, her son is not autistic, and said it made her “furious.”
It’s an emotion we’ve not witnessed publicly from the wife of such an emphatic man unafraid to spout vitriol. Melania has been on the sidelines and stayed silent even amid even the most shocking allegations against her husband. She did not respond to news that her husband had paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 shortly before his first election to keep quiet about their alleged affair, said to have taken place in 2006, when Barron was a few months old. Former Playboy girl Karen McDougal also claimed to have had a relationship with Trump between 2006 and 2007. The White House denied the affairs.
But can she handle another four years of scrutiny in such a public facing role? Perhaps the lines from her Fox interview about her approach to being in a step-family are telling of how she’ll move forward. Her advice was: “to take the individual as they are. You cannot control anyone. You can control only your own behavior, your own words. Everybody’s in control of [their] own self. I’m not in control of my husband. I’m not in control of his children. I’m not even in control of my child. He is his own person. And we all have yes and nos and we all are all individual. Once you live your life with respect and love, that’s all that matters.”
Perhaps it’s telling that Melania has also used her book to speak out about her pro-choice views in detail. She posted to social media ahead of its release some of the statements from it, saying that women have rights to “individual freedom”.
In the memoir she says, “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”
Adding: “a woman’s fundamental right of individual More lines are likely to see Melania’s name and tome make headlines later this week when it is released in the UK in the same week as the election.
To the contrary of expectations of Melania retreating, it seems she is courting publicity more than ever, though on her own terms. And it looks likely those terms include not living in the White House and wearing oversized sunglasses when she sees fit — a thick skin isn’t always enough.
