Tragic Details About Melania Trump

It's a question as old as time (okay, as old as Donald Trump's presidency): is Melania Trump a villain or a victim? Ever since Donald first ran for the White House in 2015, Melania has arguably been subjected to constant public humiliation due to her husband's seemingly endless controversies. Having been repeatedly caught making a fool of himself on camera (not to mention his many incendiary Tweets), Donald Trump's transgressions are by no means a secret. But as her husband takes the stage at rallies, ranting in his idiosyncratic Trumpist speech, Melania is invariably relegated to the background. What she makes of her husband's brash persona, however, is a mystery, as she maintains a stoic poker face in public.

While her predecessors, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples, have been respectively characterized as feisty and clingy, Melania has always been a far more elusive figure. "She was always in the news, one of the most recognized faces around the world, and I couldn't find basic information about her," biographer Mary Jordan told The Guardian. "A photographer said to me, 'She's like a ghost. Everyone knows her but nobody does.'" But perhaps Melania chooses to stay quiet as a coping mechanism against her own personal melancholy. Here's a look at tragic details about Melania Trump.

Born in Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) in 1970, Melania Trump was raised in the small industrial town of Sevnica. For the first 10 years of Trump's life, Yugoslavia was under the rule of Josip Broz Tito and her father, Viktor Knavs, was a devoted member of the League of Communists. Viktor was a traveling car salesman, while Trump's mother, Amalija Knavs (also known as Malci), worked in a state-owned textile factory. Both worked hard to give their children a better life, but for Viktor, this meant seldom seeing his family. "Melania was closer to her mother than her father," Nena Bedek, Trump's childhood friend, told The New York Times. "Viktor was often away, and Malci and the girls were often alone."

Surrounded by factory smoke, the family lived in an austere, five-story apartment block, where Trump dreamed of a better life. According to those who knew her, she couldn't wait to escape Sevnica and embrace newfound freedoms. "She's a girl who grew up in a really small town and couldn't wait to get out," Mary Jordan, author of "The Art of Her Deal," told CBS News. "She told everyone that. I mean, everyone I talked to in Slovenia said, 'She couldn't wait to get out of this town. She wanted to be where the action is.'" When Melania married Donald Trump years later, he reportedly promised her that she would never have to return to her homeland.

The Trump family has long been plagued by affair rumors, and patriarch Donald Trump is allegedly a serial philanderer. In his 2018 book "Fire and Fury," Michael Wolff alleged that Donald cheated on Melania Trump multiple times. Though the White House claimed that Wolff was lying, further cheating allegations would soon plague the Trumps.

Also that year, pornographic actor Stormy Daniels released a memoir, "Full Disclosure," in which she detailed her alleged affair with Donald in 2006. "'I had sex with that,' I'd say to myself. Eech," she reflected. Prior to the 2016 election, she accepted $130,000 in hush money to keep the alleged tryst a secret; Donald allegedly falsified business records to cover up the payment. He was also accused of having a 10-month long extramarital relationship with former Playboy model Karen McDougal from 2006 to 2007. When the hush money case went to trial in 2024, it was alleged Donald was still cheating with McDougal while Melania was pregnant with Barron Trump, though it was ruled that the prosecution was not permitted to mention this in court.

Understandably, Melania was said to be angry about the alleged affairs. "She is aware of who her husband is and keeps her life upbeat with her own family and a few close friends," a source told People. Yet, she stood by her man, fueling speculation as to possible reasons why Donald and Melania stay together.

Melania Trump has a close relationship with her son Barron Trump, but that pregnancy came with a price. When Melania was pregnant with Barron, Donald Trump gave her an ultimatum: lose the baby weight in a week or it's over. "You know, Howard, she's got the kind of a body and makeup where, about one day after the baby, it's going to be the same as it was before," Donald told Howard Stern, per The Washington Post. When Stern asked if the business magnate was serious about his one day ultimatum, he replied, "I think I'll give her a week."

Donald later claimed that he was joking and would love Melania no matter what, but according to insiders who spoke to Vanity Fair, he was deadly serious. "She promised him that everything would go back to the way it was," a source said. "There was no 'How do you feel?' No opening of doors, making sure she didn't fall. Just 'You wanted to have a baby.'" Likewise, former Trump supporter Andrea Peyser wrote in the New York Post that she was disgusted after witnessing Donald body-shame his postpartum wife.

As a young woman trying to get her big break in the modeling industry, Melania Trump posed nude for French magazine Max back in 1996. Two decades later, the New York Post obtained the NSFW photos and plastered them on its front page.

According to the book "Fire and Fury," Melania was inconsolable over the leak. The Post was criticized over its salacious spread, with some suggesting that Melania was deemed fair game for slut-shaming due to her contentious husband. "A woman's value does not lie solely in her youth, beauty, and sexuality," women's advocate Jennifer Siebel Newsom told Yahoo Style. "The New York Post's recent cover story and imagery about Melania Trump perpetuates this limiting, sexist narrative." Whoopi Goldberg and Patricia Arquette also condemned the outlet for seemingly trying to humiliate Melania.

At the time, there were claims that Donald Trump may have leaked the photos as a distraction from his myriad faux pas, but Melania reportedly balked at the idea. Feeling betrayed, she allegedly suspected that Roger Stone, Donald's former adviser, was the man behind the leak. "This time, the idea that [Trump] would throw his naked wife under the bus was almost so gross and salacious, and the photos so B-movie bad, the press ultimately spent very little time discussing them," Kate Bennett wrote in her book "Free, Melania: The Unauthorized Biography." Stone denied that he was in any way responsible for the leak.

However one may feel about the brash, divisive Donald Trump, it's safe to say that his young son wasn't to blame for his innumerable controversies. Some dissenters disagreed, however, and viewed Barron Trump as fair game for invective. 

In 2018, actor and counterculture icon Peter Fonda launched a scathing attack on Barron, then aged 12, in the wake of controversy over child migrant detention camps. "We should rip Barron Trump from his mother's arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles and see if mother will will [sic] stand up against the giant a–hole she is married to," Fonda wrote on X, per CNN. He promptly deleted the offending Tweet and later issued an apology. In response, Donald Trump Jr. unleashed his own personal attack on Fonda, and inexplicably his sister (fellow actor and activist Jane Fonda) for her opposition to the Vietnam War almost half a century earlier.

Distraught over the attack on her son, Melania Trump contacted the Secret Service. "The tweet is sick and irresponsible," said Stephanie Grisham, Melania's communications director, per The Hill. Melania herself made a rare political interjection when she voiced her opposition to separating child migrants from their parents. "She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart," said Grisham.

The year 2018 was difficult for Melania Trump, who felt the public's ire after donning her infamous "I don't care" jacket and was mocked over her "Be Best" campaign. To add to her woes, she had to be hospitalized due to kidney problems. She underwent an embolization, a procedure that blocks blood vessels.

It's not known why Trump had to undergo the procedure (she is notoriously tight-lipped about her private life), but it may have been due to a tumor or an aneurysm. "The reason to do an embolization of the kidney is to actually cut off the blood supply of one of the arteries in the kidney," medical expert Dr. Natalie Azar told Today. "Experts we consulted say the most plausible explanations are: One, there might have been a benign tumor in the kidney and when it gets to a certain size, it can spontaneously bleed. Or there might have been a blood vessel abnormality like an aneurysm, which can also bleed."

Trump was expected to remain at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for several days. Typically, embolization patients do not remain in hospital as long as Trump did. Speaking to USA Today, urologic surgeon Jamin Brahmbhatt speculated that the then-first lady's longer hospital stay may have been due to her suffering from unpleasant side effects  — such as vomiting, nausea, and pain — or the treatment of a large tumor.

Melania Trump's Eastern European lineage has been used by some critics as a means of humiliating her. In 2018, Jimmy Kimmel was criticized for mocking Trump's accent on his titular live show, mimicking her pronunciation as she read a children's book. "You realize what this means," Kimmel then asked his sidekick, Guillermo Rodríguez, per the Chicago Tribune. "You could be first lady of the United States!" The outlet condemned Kimmel for the skit, arguing that attacks on Trump were attacks on all immigrants. Kimmel later apologized.

In 2020, former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald was furious when Trump unveiled the renovated White House Rose Garden, and made a series of X posts that were deemed xenophobic. "It is a destruction of our history, something no other First Lady would have had the gall to do," Eichenwald wrote in a since-deleted post (via Fox News). "This is the first time I have been furious that @FLOTUS is a foreigner. She has no right to wreck our history." He then called Melania trashy and evil and said she needed to get out of the White House. Journalist Mehdi Hasan called out Eichenwald, tweeting, "This is a horrible anti-immigrant take, Kurt, and you should delete it and apologize."

Left-wing journalist Laurie Penny has also called out public mockery of Trump. Writing for the New Statesman, they argued that xenophobic dogwhistles were being justified against the then-first lady merely by virtue of her bullish husband.

Though they like to project a veneer of an idealized couple, there are signs that Donald and Melania Trump's marriage is on the rocks. In a 2017 Vanity Fair profile, insiders noted that Melania appears to take on the role of a dutiful and passive wife who lets her husband steal the limelight. Her passivity apparently masks her deep unhappiness with Donald, who has grown more distant from his wife as the years pass.

When Donald made his first presidential bid, Melania was reportedly terrified at the prospect of her husband winning. "She never wanted this, and never had any interest," an insider divulged. Also that year, sources spoke to Us Weekly claiming Melania was dissatisfied with life and feared leaving her apartment. "Melania is unhappy with how her life ended up," said an insider. "She is miserable."

As Donald Trump grows older, experts say he and Melania face more hurdles, with the latter potentially experiencing greater loneliness and isolation. That's not to say that the couple has ever been particularly close, however. "I don't know any couple that spends as much time apart," biographer Mary Jordan told The Guardian. Though Jordan added that the Trumps' unusual dynamic seems to work, it's been claimed that the distant couple still engage in heated arguments. In 2019, witnesses told People that Melania was visibly upset following an argument with Donald at Mar-a-Lago. Melania's rep denied the claims.

Melania Trump was devastated when her beloved mother, Amalija Knavs, died in January 2024, aged 78. Her cause of death was not disclosed. On Instagram, Melania shared a photo of her mother, to whom she bears a striking resemblance, and penned a poignant tribute. "On behalf of my family, I would like to extend our deepest gratitude for the love and support that you have showered upon us throughout this journey of loss and grief," she wrote. "We will cherish the beautiful memories of my beloved mother, and forever keep her light in our hearts."

Attending her mother's funeral with her dad Viktor Knavs, husband Donald Trump, and son Barron Trump, Melania looked distraught and close to tears. She delivered a heartbreaking eulogy, in which she reflected on how her mom inspired her to become a model through her passion for fashion. "In her presence, the world seemed to shimmer with radiant joy," she said, per Fox News. "She was not just a friend, but a confidant. A ray of light in the darkest of days. In her company, I found peace knowing that she would always be there to listen ... Our bond was unbreakable." Melania was the only person to deliver a eulogy at the funeral, though Donald mentioned his mother-in-law's death at a rally, noting that she played a major role in his son's upbringing.

Folks the world over will likely remember where they were when news broke of the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump in 2024. From the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and the attempted killing of Ronald Reagan, being targeted by would-be assassins appears to be an unfortunate by-product of holding such a prominent political position. Donald is no exception, having suffered a bloody ear after just about dodging death during a televised rally in Pennsylvania.

Appearing on Fox News (via the Independent), Donald revealed that a distraught Melania feared the worst following the shooting. "She can't really even talk about it, which is okay, because that means she likes me, or she loves me," he said. Interestingly, Donald had said in 2019 that his wife wouldn't cry her eyes out if someone made an attempt on his life, finding the idea of her distress inconceivable.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, Melania condemned the shooter and claimed that her husband had been dehumanized in the eyes of his enemies. "When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron's life, were on the brink of devastating change," she said in a statement, per People. "A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald's passion ... The core facets of my husband's life — his human side — were buried below the political machine."