Her husband didn’t need it. The justice department didn’t ask for it. The victims of Jeffrey Epstein were upset about it. And the only one who seemed to understand why Melania Trump decided to speak out about the scandalous Jeffrey Epstein was Melania herself.
The Trumps have a long history of placing their own personal interests ahead of just about everything else. And Melania’s decision to tell the world now that she was not “a victim” of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 after being indicted for the sex trafficking of minors, seems right on Trump brand.
The first lady cares enormously about her public image. Her recent movie, Melania, was a multimillion-dollar effort to burnish it. According to numerous interviews with those who work for or with her, the first lady spends a huge amount of time scrolling the internet and reading what is written about her, and she has been furious for a long time about what she just described as the “numerous fake images and statements” online about her and Epstein. As she said on Thursday, this has been going on “for years now” by people trying to damage her “good name”.
But rather than stop the chatter, her words ignited more. Famous people know it’s often wiser to ignore what is said about them than repeat it and give it more oxygen.
Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel quickly went on air and played a clip of Melania discussing “the lies” linking her to Epstein and demanding they stop. “What images have been circulating on social media? What is she talking about?”
But Donald Trump can’t be happy, Kimmel said, because he spent “six weeks trying to bomb the Epstein story out of the headlines” and then, two days after a ceasefire in Iran, “she puts it right back on top. She must really hate him. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
Even some of the victims of Epstein, who were underage at the time of the abuse, were critical. Melania called on Congress to hold public hearings “so every woman should have her day to tell her story” – but the victims have already spoken out. They are upset that the justice department has been slow-walking an investigation and heavily redacting documents that they say are protecting powerful people involved in the abuse.
Many speculate that Melania was trying to get ahead of more information that will be released, that new photos, emails or testimony might be coming that tie her to Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. More information is likely to emerge about Paolo Zampolli, the former model agency director whose name frequently appears in the Epstein files and who is now a presidential envoy “for global partnerships”, who told me he introduced Melania to Trump.
In any case what Melania did this week fits a pattern of behaviour: she stews about something, and when she is ready she speaks her mind. This was about trying to clear her name, not a higher good. Why didn’t she talk to the victims and ask what they want? Why not push for more transparency from her husband’s justice department?
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Instead she once again said just enough to perplex people. She has been called the Slovenian Sphinx because she is so hard to read and understand. It is still not clear why in 2018 she wore a jacket that said: “I really don’t care, do you?” during a trip to a migrant child detention centre. Her Melania movie was billed as a behind-the-scenes look at the first lady but was as revealing as a perfectly staged photo shoot.
She did say she “never had any knowledge of Epstein[’s] abuse of his victims” and was never on his plane or his island. But she did not give anything close to a complete account of her interactions with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000 at an event Donald and I attended together.” What event? Where? Who invited them?
Before leaving the podium at the White House and not taking a single question, Melania said: “The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.”
The only thing certain is that the talk is not going to end.
Mary Jordan is the author of an unauthorised biography of Melania Trump, The Art of Her Deal
Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images