In Her First Appearance Since the Stormy Daniels Scandal, First Lady Melania Trump Will Attend the State of the Union
First Lady Melania Trump will attend President Trump’s first State of the Union tonight. In most other presidencies, this wouldn’t be news: It’s usually a given that the president’s spouse would be there, proudly beaming and with special guests, in the House chamber. But, of course, the Trumps aren’t the usual First Couple. Deciding to show up tonight means Mrs. Trump had to, at least temporarily, set aside her reported fury with her husband over his reported affair with a porn star in 2006, when the Trumps were newlyweds and while Melania was pregnant with their son, Barron.
It’s a fact that has truly, remarkably, flown under the radar: Once upon a time, the news that the president of the United States allegedly cheated on his wife with an adult actress and then his lawyer paid her $130,000 in hush money to remain silent about their affair would be big, nonstop, cable-news-ticker-scrolling news. But when said president is already on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, and upwards of 16 women have already accused him of forcible groping and kissing and other misconduct, infidelity is but a blip. People seemed to have forgotten this latest scandal happened at all—or that Trump has a wife, First Lady Melania Trump, who may be profoundly impacted by it.
Mrs. Trump keeps such a low profile, it may be similarly easy to miss that she has seldom been seen in public since the Daniels saga broke earlier this month; that she canceled a planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with her husband at the last-minute, and instead made an unplanned visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington before jetting to Mar-a-Lago and decompressing at the spa, a trip that, according to The New York Times, cost taxpayers an estimated $64,600. But amid presumptions that Mrs. Trump had to have known about Daniels, the Times also reports that “the reports of a payoff blindsided the first lady, who was furious with her husband.”
In the past, Mrs. Trump has defended her husband’s behavior, [dismissing the Access Hollywood tape as “boy talk”]
(https://www.vogue.com/article/donald-trump-tape-wasnt-talk) and saying before the 2016 election that she believes her husband’s denials of the multiple women accusing him of sexual misconduct. Canceling her planned trip to Davos was a notable break from the tradition of standing by her husband’s side. But tonight, her absence would have been way too glaring: Whether she really wants to or not, the country will watch as First Lady stands and claps for her husband.
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