Melania's Art of the Deal

Melania Trump was in no rush to move into the White House. That’s when she renegotiated her prenup, a new book says.

When Melania Trump stayed behind in New York after her husband’s presidential inauguration, she said it was because she didn’t want to interrupt their then-10-year-old son Barron’s school year. News stories at the time concentrated on an apparent frostiness between the first couple and on the exorbitant taxpayer costs to protect Melania and Barron away from Washington.

Those stories are true, but Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan reveals in a new book that the first lady was also using her delayed arrival to the White House as leverage for renegotiating her prenuptial agreement with President Trump.

The campaign had been full of harsh news about Trump’s alleged sexual indiscretions and infidelities, from the “grab them by the p---y” Access Hollywood tape to an affair with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal; Melania learned new details from the media coverage, Jordan writes.

The incoming first lady needed time to cool off, and “to amend her financial arrangement with Trump — what Melania referred to as ‘taking care of Barron,’ ” Jordan writes in “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.”

For her book, Jordan conducted more than a hundred interviews, with everyone from the first lady’s Slovenian schoolmates to former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and she lays out an argument that Melania Trump is as devoted to her own mythmaking as her husband is to his.

“Both are avid creators of their own history,” Jordan writes, arguing that the #FreeMelania hashtag ought to be retired because of her consistent support of her husband and her moves to stay in the White House.

“She is .?.?. much more like him than it appears,” Jordan adds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/melania-book-art-of-her-deal-prenup-white-house/2020/06/11/ce63ec02-abec-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most