WASHINGTON — In January 2018, when she first saw reports that her husband had paid off a porn actor, Melania Trump was furious. She jetted off to Palm Beach, Florida, leaving the president to languish in Washington. She eventually returned, only to take a separate car to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address.
As a criminal trial against Trump opened Monday, on charges that he had falsified records to cover up that sex scandal involving Stormy Daniels, Melania Trump did not appear. She has long privately referred to the case involving Daniels as “his problem” and not hers.
But the former first lady shares his view that the trial itself is unfair, according to several people familiar with her thinking.
In private, she has called the proceedings “a disgrace” tantamount to election interference, according to a person with direct knowledge of her comments who could not speak publicly out of fear of jeopardizing a personal relationship with the Trumps.
She may support her husband, but Trump is bound to see headlines involving Donald Trump and Daniels that could reopen old wounds. On Monday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, also said that Melania Trump could be among the potential witnesses as the trial gets underway.
All of this could put Donald Trump on shaky ground with his wife, who has defended him in some critical moments — including when he bragged on tape about grabbing women by their genitals — and withheld her public support in others, such as when she did not appear alongside him as he locked up victories on Super Tuesday.
“At the end of the day, she can make or break his candidacy,” said Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s former press secretary who resigned on Jan. 6, 2021, and went on to write a memoir. “And at the end of the day, she could probably make or break him.”
Some of the more personally damaging details of Donald Trump’s behavior may not come up in court. On Monday, Merchan banned some testimony related to the timing of a reported affair between Trump and a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal. The National Enquirer, which has long-standing ties to Trump, bought the rights to McDougal’s story for $150,000 and then never published it — a practice known as “catch and kill.”
Jurors may hear about the relationship between Trump and McDougal, Merchan ruled — but not accounts that the affair continued while Melania Trump was pregnant with their son, Barron. (If the court proceedings bring up Barron, whose privacy his mother fiercely guards, Grisham said, Trump is likely to be “not happy” with her husband “all over again.”)
The trial is nonetheless all but certain to examine a timeline that Trump would prefer not to revisit. Donald Trump and Daniels met at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament, at a time when the Trumps had been married for a year and Melania Trump had recently given birth to Barron.
Donald Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. But prosecutors say that when Daniels looked to sell her story a decade later, Trump directed Michael Cohen, then his lawyer and fixer, to pay Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. The reports of a payoff blindsided Melania Trump, who responded to the initial reports by getting out of town.
She canceled a trip to Davos, Switzerland, with her husband, made an impromptu visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and then she jetted off to Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ beachside fortress in Palm Beach, where she spent part of her trip relaxing at the spa. She eventually reappeared, only to take a separate car to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and appear on the arm of a male military aide.
By now, allies of the Trumps say, Melania Trump has lumped the trial into all of the other legal problems her husband faces, and she is steelier than she was before.
Last month, she appeared next to Donald Trump to welcome Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Weeks later, she voted alongside her husband in Florida, where she responded to a question about whether she would be campaigning more often with a cryptic “stay tuned.”
Supporters have hailed her scheduled appearance at a fundraising event for the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of LGBTQ+ conservatives, as proof that she is prepared to be more engaged on the campaign trail.
The event, scheduled for Saturday, will draw attendees who have paid at least $10,000 for a chance to interact with her, according to a person familiar with the planning who was not authorized to detail it.
The event will be set up like a cocktail reception, and she is expected to deliver remarks about her time as first lady and reiterate her support for her husband.
But there is one catch: The event will not be held in a battleground state or at any location on a traditional campaign trail. It will be held in a reception room at Mar-a-Lago, steps from Melania Trump’s suite.
The Log Cabin Republicans have been a source of income for Trump before. According to a financial disclosure last year, Trump received a $250,000 payment from the group in December 2022. Charles Moran, a representative of the group, said in an email that Trump was not taking a fee from the Log Cabin Republicans for her appearance.
A spokesperson for Melania Trump did not respond to a request for comment for this article, and neither did a representative for the Trump campaign.
Trump’s allies say that she will likely appear again as the campaign continues — a sign, they say, that she realizes there is a real chance she could become first lady again — but that she is likely to be selective with her time.
For now, she is focused on Barron’s graduation from high school later this spring and preparing him for college. Donald Trump complained repeatedly on social media Monday that he might miss his son’s graduation because of the trial. Barron attends a private school near Mar-a-Lago and is expected to graduate in May.
Melania Trump’s allies say other personal issues could keep her from the campaign trail. She is said to still be mourning the death of her mother, Amalija Knavs, who died in January and was one of a small number of people in her world who had her absolute trust. Her sister, Ines Knauss, is another confidant, but Knauss lives in New York City.
Another person Trump trusts is Kellyanne Conway, who served as counselor to Donald Trump in the White House; Melania Trump is pushing for Conway to return to Donald Trump’s orbit in a formal capacity, a development first reported by the news site Puck. Conway, who was a confidant for both Trumps when they were in the White House, has said that Donald Trump cares deeply about his wife’s opinion — and, in some cases, he might even fear it.
“He listens to many of us,” she told a congressional committee in 2022, “but he reserves fear for one person, Melania Trump.”
–The New York Times
