Unconventional marriages easily devolve into conventional ones. Melania Trump started as the sex-object spouse to a famously coarse and demanding casino-magnate, playboy husband. But having a child and approaching forty, what she most sought was domesticity and respectability, at radical odds with what her husband wanted or could give.
The next best thing, then, was the pretense of domesticity and respectability, with her most basic desire simply not to be humiliated.
Indeed, after a difficult decade in their marriage—a fairly constant and not-very-hidden grab them by the pussy time—a getting-older Trump seemed to have less nightlife interest and opportunities. But all that was suddenly replaced by the launch of his attention-grabbing, reality television-style run for president in 2015.
The true essence of Donald Trump is that he cannot be alone. He needs to be talking all the time and needs people to hear his voice. This is bizarrely one way. He talks, and his audience listens (or pretends to). In the casino, real estate, and television years, his audience was mostly a small circle of men—bodyguards, drivers, handlers, go-fetch-it guys at his beck and call. His sound man on The Apprentice, for instance, became one of his constant companions. It all had a very mafia-like look and feel: guys just sitting around and playing cards as they waited for him—often waiting for him during his interludes with women.
That subtly changed in his candidate phase. His daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, both trying to help in this new political project and trying to keep an eye on it—and, in addition, who saw themselves as modern, marketing-forward entrepreneurs—lent him a new talent: Hope Hicks.
The thug-like guys who had previously surrounded Trump were now replaced by a 26-year-old former model turned PR girl who, in fact, looked like Melania.
The more visibility and attention that Hicks got, the more Melania stewed. Indeed, with Hicks there began a pattern of Trump’s female aides being confused with Melania by the press—that was especially galling to his wife.
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