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Ahead of Donald Trump's 2016 electoral victory, Melania Trump warned that the public shouldn't expect her to be his puppet. "Nobody controls me," she told GQ that year. When her husband decided to run for office, Melania supported his decision but made it clear it would have no bearing on who she was. "I chose not to go into politics and policy," she said. "Those policies are my husband's job." Ahead of the 2024 general election, she proved she was indeed her own person with her own political views.
In her eponymous memoir "Melania," which was released on October 8, 2024, just weeks before Donald and Kamala Harris faced off at the polls, the former first lady shared her views on hot-button topics, including abortion and immigration. Her revelations are surprising not only because they go against some of the most fiercely defended stances by the GOP, but also because she is known for her elusiveness. Melania's absence from the campaign trail has sparked intrigue and theories about Melania and Donald's marriage.
Her preference for privacy has raised curiosity about her desire to give insight into her political differences with Donald now. As those who know her have argued, Melania's decisions are often hard to read. "She'll never tip her hand; she'll always leave you guessing," her former aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff wrote in a May 2024 essay for the Daily Beast. That may be true, but this is the biggest insight she has offered into her political views.
Melania Trump has privately challenged Donald on his policies
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While Melania Trump has largely kept her political views from the public, she shared her stance on a couple of big ones in her book. As it turns out, she has always been pro-choice, and that didn't change after her husband became the biggest name of the global far-right movement. "Restricting a woman's right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body," she wrote in her memoir (via The Guardian). "I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life."
Melania also revealed that she didn't stay quiet in light of Donald Trump's controversial 2018 policy that separated immigrant children from their parents. She even claimed she played a key role in his decision to end the policy just a couple of months into it. "This has to stop," she recalled telling the then-president in her memoir. She added that she "emphasiz[ed] the trauma it was causing these families."
This revelation certainly comes as a surprise to political observers, who remember Melania's controversial decision to wear a jacket bearing the words "I don't really care, do u?" during a visit to an immigrant child detention facility near the Texas border. She denied her choice of outfit had any meaning relating to the Trump administration's immigration policies. "It's a jacket, there was no hidden message," her then-communications director Stephanie Grisham told The Guardian. Even when she opens up about her views, Melania still keeps us guessing.
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