On a day which variously included Donald Trump promising to rename the Gulf of Mexico, virtually all of the January 6 rioters being released, and Elon Musk doing a gesture so reminiscent of the Third Reich that it was actually blurred on Australian and German television, it was a far more pedestrian moment that ended up stealing the show at the presidential inauguration on Monday. A hat. Specifically, Melania Trump’s wide-brimmed, face-shielding, Hamburglar-style hat, which seemed to prevent her husband from kissing her.
Looking characteristically glum, the outré garb was part of the wider funereal vibe of the all-black outfit Melania picked for the most important day of her husband’s life. And yes, when the President leaned in, in front of millions of people on the world stage, they had to settle for a toe-curling air kiss.
The reaction was instant and effusive. Jimmy Fallon labelled it Melania’s very own “border wall.” “It was literally throwing shade,” wrote the Financial Times. “Melania knew EXACTLY what she was doing when she chose that hat,” said one X/Twitter user. Kim Kardashian even posted a photo of Melania on her Instagram story.
This has long been the narrative surrounding the First Lady. The long-suffering wife, trapped in a loveless marriage, a sympathetic hostage of an unforeseen political situation. At Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, a lugubrious-looking FLOTUS sparked the hashtag #FreeMelania. Since then, every side-eye, twitch of her lips, and flick of her hand has sent the world into frenetic speculation about what signal she might sagaciously be sending to the world, and how desperately miserable she must be. At the 2017 Women’s March, protesters even displayed banners with the slogan: “MELANIA: BLINK TWICE IF YOU NEED HELP.” “We should be kind to America’s First Victim – Melania Trump,” ran a headline in the New Statesman at the time.
It’s an appealing narrative – what more delicious schadenfreude than the idea that, while Trump might well be a pseudo-fascist and have the most powerful people in the world lining up to kiss his ring, behind closed doors he can’t even get a peck from his own wife? The reality, though, is that Melania has never been a naive trophy wife, nor even a silent resister to her husband’s agenda. In fact, she has been a consistent, smiling presence during Trump’s most dangerous behaviour.
At every turn, Melania has been given the benefit of the doubt with no just cause
Back in 2011, before there was any political motivation to do so, Melania was already peddling the racist Birther conspiracy started by her husband that President Obama was born in Kenya and was therefore constitutionally unfit to be president. Over the years, she has also consistently dismissed her husband’s sexism, trivialising him bragging about sexual assault on tape as “boy talk,” and asking whether anyone has “ever checked the background” of the women making assault allegations against him.
In 2018, when Melania wore a jacket emblazoned with the words “I really don’t care, do you?” to visit detained immigrant children on the Texas border, many clamoured to justify it, claiming she must have misunderstood the optics. That same year, she was caught on tape complaining that the media was bothering her about the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the US border. “They said, ‘Oh, what about the children, that they were separated?’ Give me a f***ing break,” she said, according to the CNN transcript.
The First Lady also publicly stood by her husband when he falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and cast doubt on the results herself: “I am not the only person who questions the results,” she wrote in her 2024 book. After the 2021 Capitol insurrection, her former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, wrote in her own memoir that Melania refused to issue a statement condemning the violence, leading Grisham to resign.
At every turn, Melania has been given the benefit of the doubt, and afforded victim status with no just cause. Why is it so much easier for us to infantilise her as a shrinking violet or a martyr, than to afford her the agency she so clearly possesses? It’s worth remembering that this is not the 18th century – women are free and able to divorce their husbands, and I’m sure the pre-nup deal for the FLOTUS isn’t too shabby.
There are many female victims of the Trump administration, women whose lives been devastated by his presidency. Melania is not one of them.
Emma Loffhagen is a London Standard writer