First Lady Melania Trump took centre stage on Thursday during a White House event promoting her Fostering the Future initiative.
At the event, the First Lady appeared comfortable whilst discussing the initiative designed to “provide young Americans in or transitioning out of the foster care system with the tools they need to become successful adults.”
Body language expert Judi James said that Melania appeared to have gained confidence since President Trump’s first term in office.
“It might only be a form of body language optical illusion as Donald and Melania appear to role-swap for this event, but it’s amazing how well that role-swap seems to work,” James explained.
“Compared to her status and confidence signals when Trump became President for his first term in office, when Ivanka threw her into the chorus line shade and her rather rigid demeanour suggested she was hating every minute of the spotlight.”
However, James noted that the First Lady “presents as elegant, confident and even able to throw her own husband into chorus line shade on this appearance.”
‘Gaze of respect’
James observes that whilst her husband may be the commander-in-chief, it is in fact Melania who “steps straight up to the lectern while Donald moves quietly to stand behind and to one side of her, peering round at his wife with a gaze of respect.”
James continues by observing that the president’s body language “on similar occasions has veered toward the ‘proud spouse’ poses but this time he adopts the look of a member of staff with his shoulders slightly hunched as he humbly aims his smile and his eyes at the floor.”
The expert further notes how Melania’s “energy and her assured movements are in contrast to Trump’s heavier, slower style and they give her the edge in terms of dynamic leadership signals.”
‘Thorn in her side’
The first lady and first daughter are reported to have a strained relationship following a Daily Mail article which claimed Melania was delighted when the Miami socialite did not accompany her father on their UK trip.
Sources close to the first lady suggested she was pleased that her stepdaughter, whom she privately refers to as a “thorn in her side,” would not be joining the visit.
“[Ivanka] was always kind of vying for space and Melania wanted her own space,” explained Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of the first lady, Mary Jordan, discussing the pair. “Melania didn’t need a second first lady that Ivanka had kind of become.”
Ivanka competition
According to Jordan, Melania has consistently felt that Ivanka, 44, was competing with her. Whilst the two women have refrained from making any public criticisms of one another, those in their circle have documented the friction, describing a strained dynamic where both are constantly seeking the president’s attention.
During Trump’s first state visit to Britain, Ivanka and her husband Jared pushed to appear alongside the President and First Lady at the Buckingham Palace welcome ceremony hosted by the late Queen Elizabeth II. However, Melania firmly rejected this, insisting protocol required they arrive with the rest of the staff, according to Stephanie Grisham, the First Lady’s former White House chief of staff and press secretary.
“It is inappropriate, it should just be the president and I,” Melania said, according to Grisham. In public, Ivanka has chosen the cautious approach of remaining silent when she has nothing to contribute.
Family tension
During a nearly two-hour January interview with The Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast, the First Daughter conspicuously failed to mention the First Lady at all. “Sometimes the most cutting way to talk about someone is to not talk about them at all,” Vanity Fair observed about the interview.
“She didn’t mention her stepmother, Melania Trump, one during the lengthy interview, though she profusely praised her mother, the late Ivana Trump, as an ‘unbelievable role model for what a working woman could be, almost in mythological terms,’ and ‘impossibly glamorous.'”.
