Trump has a problem with women. Does that include Melania?

The former first lady has been wrongly described as a helpless woman unable to shape her own destiny, writes Jon Sopel. A vocal defence of abortion rights in her new memoir shows she can play an important role in the election – but will it be one that Donald wants?

Donald Trump has a woman problem. We know that because it is the reason he now has a criminal record over the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. We know that because of the jury in New York finding Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E Jean Carroll and awarding her tens of millions of dollars in damages.

And just look at the polls. This could be the most gendered election ever, with women’s votes splitting decidedly in favour of Kamala Harris, while Trump goes for the “bro vote” – the locker-room-bantering, towel-snapping, beer-chugging frat boys. Oh, and young, macho, Black and Latino men, too.

After the overturning of Roe v Wade – the seminal ruling that gave women a right to choose on abortion – Harris has been piling up the votes among women. And remember, women go out to vote in larger numbers than men, and in the US there are many more women than men.

But what I want to do is dwell on one woman in particular: his wife, Melania Trump. And the question: does he have a problem with her, too?

She’s just written a memoir, and in the pre-publicity blurb she teases us: “As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation, I feel a responsibility to set the record straight and to provide the actual account of my experiences.” Wow. So it’s going to be juicy.

Well, not really. There are no behind-the-curtain stories about life in the Trump White House, and relatively few named people get an elegant Louboutin high-heel slipped into their backs. Yet in its slightly aphoristic and generalised tone, we do learn bits.

She has been notably absent from the campaign this time around. She is not doing the adoring wife bit, gazing admiringly from the side while her husband addresses rally after rally as he rampages around the country. In fact, she has scarcely been seen in public since Trump left office in disgrace after the events of January 6.

Melania Trump has been notably absent from her husband’s latest election campaign (Getty)

There has always been a mass of speculation about her and the state of their relationship. The prenups and renegotiated prenups. The separate bedrooms and questions over how much time she ever spent at the White House, as opposed to in Potomac, north of Washington, where her parents had a house and where son Barron went to school. The stories and rumours are legion.

And then there were the outward signs. There was the presidential trip to Israel when I was travelling with them, and they were met from Air Force One by Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara. As they walked from the aircraft, the Netanyahus were holding hands, so Trump, not wanting to be outdone, tried to grab Melania’s – only to have it pushed away.

It was later on that trip to Jerusalem that Netanyahu deliciously introduced them at a banquet as “the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the first wife”. Close, but no cigar. You could have first lady or third wife. But not the combo Bibi alighted on.

Weirdly, my wife and a couple of friends had dinner one Saturday at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, only to find the two of them coming to sit at a table opposite us. It was just after the Stormy Daniels story had broken, and I’m going to say it didn’t look like the most romantic dinner ever. But maybe it’s difficult to have an intimate tete-a-tete when you have eight Secret Service guards surrounding you while you eat.

In her new book, Melania sides with those women coming out for Harris because of the change in the abortion laws. She writes: “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”

The conservative base is not going to like that. Not one little bit. But here is the enigma with Melania and Trump’s relationship: is she doing this in opposition to her husband, or is it an act of reassurance to women that she can be the softer face of the Trump ticket?

The same happened again and again during his presidency. Was she sticking two fingers up at her husband, or was she showing concern? She went to the southern border at a time when the administration was cracking down on illegal immigration and ordering the detention of children away from their parents (a policy that resulted in thousands of families never being reunited) to show her concern and unhappiness.

Again, it was hard to be sure if she was opposing her husband or attempting to show a more caring side.

Elsewhere in her memoir, she writes about January 6 in a tone that is hard to take seriously.

“I wasn’t aware of the events unfolding at the Capitol building,” she says. “Traditionally, the first lady’s chief of staff provides detailed briefings surrounding our nation’s important issues. My second White House chief of staff failed to do so. Had I been fully informed of all the details, naturally, I would have immediately denounced the violence that occurred at the Capitol building.”

Really? I mean, really? Is it possible to have been in the charged atmosphere of the White House on January 6 and been blissfully unaware there was an attempted insurrection happening up the road? I don’t buy that she was just looking at fabric swatches for some redecoration scheme.

But there’s something else I don’t buy, and it is the rather misogynistic trope that she was this beautiful but helpless woman, kept on a tight leash, unable to shape her own destiny. Some sort of Rapunzel locked in a tower waiting for a gallant knight to rescue her. People held up banners in the early days of the Trump administration saying “Blink if you need us to come and save you”.

That is wide of the mark. Melania Trump can look after herself. She’s shown that. But in this book, she remains a mystery. To us, and probably to Donald Trump, too. I suspect that’s just how she wants it.

Jon Sopel’s new book, ‘Strangeland: How Britain Stopped Making Sense’, is out now