Very few White House couples have intrigued us like former President Donald Trump and his first lady Melania Trump. Between Melania’s unspoken disdain for first lady duties to their innumerable cringe-worthy moments between them, it is no surprise that the former first couple had been under the public’s microscopic lens through the years.
Donald first met Melania at a party in 1998, and they hit it off right away. “It was a great chemistry and energy. We had a great time and start [sic] to talk … Something was there right away,” Melania recounted to Larry King on CNN. In 2005, after seven years of dating, the couple tied the knot in a lavish ceremony, estimated to have cost over $2 million, per Cosmopolitan. They have since remained together, albeit in an unconventional marriage, as sources have described through the years. “I don’t know any couple that spends as much time apart. They are often in the same building, but nowhere near each other … She is a loner. He is a loner. They’re perfectly happy to be separated,” author Mary Pence once said, per The Guardian.
The unwavering attention they get, however, has come with a wave of rumors through the years — some utterly ridiculous and others, almost believable. From a body double internet conspiracy to multiple cheating allegations, here are the biggest rumors about Donald Trump’s marriage to Melania so far.
Donald and Melania Trump reportedly have a transactional marriage
If you ever thought love was the binding glue between Donald Trump and Melania Trump, you might want to have a rethink. According to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, former senior adviser to Melania, the former president and former first lady are together only for what they can get from each other. “I do believe it’s a transactional marriage,” Wolkoff told BBC in 2020. “Donald got arm candy. Melania got two dynamic decades. She met Donald, she married, she became an American citizen, they had a son, and 10 years after that she’s the first lady of the United States.”
In her 2020 book, “Melania and Me,” Wolkoff detailed her 15-year relationship with the former first lady as well as the years leading up to their eventual fallout. Outside of their friendship, however, Wolkoff also touched on how she believes Melania’s marriage to Donald birthed a new side to her — a side she believes was always there. “I witnessed the transformation of Melania from gold plate to 24-karat gold,” Wolkoff wrote in the book. “I believed she had the heart to match, that she was genuinely caring and loving and worth all of our attention. … Watching her now, and seeing that only the gold shell remains, I have to wonder if that’s all she ever was, and I was the sucker who bought the fake watch on the street corner.”
There are reports Melania Trump can’t wait to divorce Donald
They put up a happy couple front, but Donald Trump and Melania Trump are anything but happy — or so an insider says. In her 2018 book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide, hinted at a looming divorce between the couple. “Melania is counting every minute until he is out of the office and she can divorce,” Manigault Newman wrote. “If Melania were to try to pull the ultimate humiliation and leave while he’s in office, he would find a way to punish her.”
According to People, Manigault Newman alleged Melania, who came into America as an immigrant, felt indebted to Donald for helping her secure the Einstein (EB-1) visa and is only holding off the divorce for fear of what he might do. “Since Donald is fully aware of however she acquired her permanent citizenship, he could, if there were anything fishy around it, expose the methods and somehow invalidate it,” Manigault Newman wrote in the book. “He is a vindictive man, and I would not put anything past him.”
Despite the rumors, however, Melania continues to insist that her marriage to the former president is fine. “To say you can undo something like a marriage just by thinking about it is some kind of crazy talk,” she told The New Yorker.
Donald Trump reportedly cheated on Melania
Of the many rumors there are about Donald Trump’s marriage to Melania Trump, this is perhaps the most publicized. In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal broke a story, alleging that Donald’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen paid adult film actor Stormy Daniels a sum of $130,000 to keep hidden a 2006 affair with the then-president. Daniels would later confirm the affair during an appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” telling host Anderson Cooper she’d asked about his wife who had just welcomed the couple’s son Barron at the time. “I asked. And he brushed it aside, said, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, you know, don’t worry about that. We don’t even — we have separate rooms and stuff,'” Daniels said.
Only a few months prior to this story, The New Yorker published an exposé, accusing Donald of having an affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal. “What can you say except I’m sorry?” McDougal later said during an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want it done to me.”
Melania, however, couldn’t be less bothered about the allegations against her husband flying in the media. “I know people like to speculate and media like to speculate about our marriage and circulate the gossip,” she told ABC News. “It is not concern and focus of mine. I’m a mother and a first lady, and I have much more important things to think about and to do.”
Donald Trump asks that Melania maintain her body
Six months into their marriage, Melania Trump became pregnant with Barron Trump, her first and only child with Donald Trump. But rather than good ol’ fatherly excitement, Donald seemingly had more concerns — his wife’s pregnancy look. “You know, they just blow up, right?” he said at the time per SFGate, via Daily Mail. “Like a blimp — in the right places. In her case, the right places. I mean she really has become a monster — in all the right places.”
In 2017, Vanity Fair reported that Donald agreed to have a child with Melania only if she was willing to maintain the body she always had. According to the outlet, while visiting the couple, a guest witnessed an exchange between them, leading to the conviction that Donald couldn’t be less indifferent about his wife’s pregnancy. “She promised him that everything would go back to the way it was,” the guest said. “And he was simply rude to her. There was no ‘How do you feel?’ No opening of doors, making sure she didn’t fall. Just ‘You wanted to have a baby.'”
Melania, on the other hand, has since described her pregnancy as a “great experience,” adding that unconditional love is one of the best parts of motherhood. “Every mother knows this,” she added. “It’s a miracle almost, I could say, that two people can create. It’s very, very special.”
Melania and Donald Trump reportedly never sleep in the same bed
Following Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, sources confirmed that Melania Trump — who at the time lived in Trump Tower in New York — was in no rush to move into the White House. She was supposedly waiting for her son Baron to finish the school year. “I don’t know if she will ever live away from New York full time, especially with her son in school there,” a source told People, adding that the former model “loves her home in Manhattan and her independent life.”
So when she eventually moved to Washington, the former model seemingly sought out ways to maintain her independence. In her 2019 book, “Free Melania,” author Kate Bennet wrote that the couple maintained separate lives within the White House, with Donald reportedly occupying the master bedroom on the second floor and Melania staying in a two-bedroom on the third floor. But this really was not news. Back in 2017, sources confirmed that for the most part of their marriage, Melania refused to share a bed with her husband. “They have separate bedrooms,” one Insider told US Weekly. “They never spend the night together — ever.”
Along with not having the same bedroom, there were also once rumors that after moving to Washington, Melania lived in a separate house with her parents and son. “It’s 1,000 percent false. We laugh at it all the time,” Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s spokeswoman later told The Washington Post.
The body double rumors
It is not every day you hear that the first lady of the United States of America has a double, but for Donald Trump and Melania Trump, rumors are apparently never-ending. Following an official engagement that saw Melania standing next to Donald as he gave a speech in October 2017, the internet went wild with theories of the first lady having a double. “They really got a body double for Melanie Trump lmaoo,” one person tweeted. “Melanie started using a body double years ago to distance herself from Trump,” another wrote. Yet, like many of the rumors about this couple, the theory turned out to be false — or so they say.
“Once again, we find ourselves consumed with a ridiculous non-story when we could be talking about the work the first lady is doing on behalf of children,” Melania’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told CNN. Despite the attempt to kill the rumors though, conspiracy theorists kept at it, digging up photos and instances to back up their claims. While some pointed out varying facial features like the teeth and smile, others maintained that the fake Melania was shorter than the real one.
Clearly not one to be riddled with unfounded rumors, Donald reportedly responded, writing on Twitter(via AP): “The Fake News photoshopped pictures of Melania, then propelled conspiracy theories that it’s actually not her by my side in Alabama and other places. They are only getting more deranged with time.”
Donald Trump reportedly blamed Melania for 2022 losses
The 2022 midterm elections saw Democrats recording victory and retaining control of the Senate. Donald Trump was not pleased. According to Vanity Fair, the former president — who announced his 2024 presidential bid on November 15 — was hoping a majority Republican win would better his chances at the polls. And, with his endorsed candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz’s loss in the Pennsylvania Senate election, things might prove harder for Donald and he is not taking it well. “Trump is indeed furious this morning, particularly about Mehmet Oz, and is blaming everyone who advised him to back Oz — including his wife, describing it as not her best decision, according to people close to him,” New York Times writer Maggie Haberman tweeted. Prior to Haberman’s tweet, CNN reporter Jim Acosta had also tweeted that “‘Trump is livid’ and ‘screaming at everyone.'”
Donald, however, has since debunked the rumor, writing on his Truth Social platform that the claims are false. “There is a Fake Story being promulgated by third rate reporter Maggie Hagaman of the Failing New York Times, that I am blaming our great former First Lady, Melania … I was not at all ANGRY. Fake News!” he wrote (via Independent).
Given Donald’s eccentric personality and Melania’s commitment to leading an out-of-sight life, we can expect more rumors to unravel in years to come.
culled from nickiswift