What is the role of women in a political movement as misogynistic as President Donald Trump's? What does it take to be the consort to an authoritarian?
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Washington Post writer Mary Jordan's deeply reported book focusing on Melania Trump tackles, in its own way, several of these questions. While the initial buzz centered around rumors that the first lady leveraged her husband's election to revise her prenup — this book is much more than a standard Bob Woodward-style recitation of insider accounts. Far from the helpless stereotype that has become a running punchline, Jordan's research reveals something larger: the personality and strategy required to become a successful despot's wife.
The first requirement for such a figure is accepting that the chief role of the feminine in an autocracy is to bolster male sexual power. "How I adore you," Clara Petacci wrote to Benito Mussolini after making love to him, according to a book of her letters. “You were so beautiful this evening, as aggressive as a lion, violent and masterful. You are the man who triumphs over other men and over life.”
From the beginning of their relationship, Melania played this role well, making sure to tell Trump's detractors that he was "a real man," according to Jordan. She purred on Howard Stern about Trump's Olympian bedroom talents. When he broke up with her at the end of 1999, she stayed home for months and didn't date, thereby luring him back, Jordan writes. For Trump, she erased her past with other men, including a Frenchman who had gifted her a car.
Discretion is the better part of valor, especially when power relies on branding. The FLOTUS has it in spades. Jordan's reporting details how Melania systematically deleted her personal history by cutting off friends and mentors as she moved from Slovenia to New York.
Because authoritarians need facts to be malleable, the second requirement of the despot's wife is to be comfortable with lies and fabrications. Melania's career as an elite "supermodel" has always been difficult to prove, but Jordan concludes it is far from the truth through interviews with photographers and model agents.