This interview of Melania in Parenting Magazine when her son was 6 is revealing. Shorter version: Barron has his own floor in Trump Tower, Donald Trump never changed a diaper or put him to bed and that's fine with her, and she praised her son for his creativity which he expressed by drawing on the walls of his playroom with crayons, saying they could always repaint. (It strikes me as tone deaf a comment as Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake." )
Her interviews make it sound like she's raising Barron by herself -- her husband is always working or traveling and she has no nanny (just a chef and personal assistant). But she doesn't really raise Barron by herself. Her parents live at Trump Tower or nearby (they still own a home in Slovenia but only visit a few times a year).
Among the incomers who built the town’s industrial base were Viktor and Amalija Knavs and their daughters Ines and Melanija. Businessman Viktor dealt in cars or spare parts or both – no one seems quite sure. Amalija was a pattern cutter at the Jutranjka childrenswear factory and may at some point have gained a promotion to pattern designer.
They lived in a five-storey block in the Naselje Heroja Maroka area. Later, Melanija and her older sister went to high school in Ljubljana, 60 miles away, and their parents built themselves a white villa in the pretty hills above the town, far away from the hourly clatter-past of the train. They still own the house but are rarely there, living instead in New York and helping look after Donald and Melania’s son, Barron.
The gist of the articles is that her parents don't speak English and taught Barron to speak Slovenic to be able to communicate with him.
Her son speaks Slovenian fluently—he uses it to speak with his grandparents, who have immigrated to New York and live near them in Trump Tower—but for Melania, Slovenia represents a relatively short and distant period of her past that she quickly outgrew.
...They spend much of the year in the US helping Melania raise her son with Trump, Barron - who is nine years old. Amalja cooks Slovenian food for her grandson and speaks to him in Slovenian so that he learns his mother's language.
And there's the issue of her insisitence none of her beauty is enhanced. But a former judge in one of her beauty contests tells a reporter she was flat-chested teen when she competed (at 16 or so.) Her modelling photos from that time show a flat chest. Now she's a very buxom woman. Her former roommate says he remembers she once she left for two weeks and returned more endowed, and that she discussed it with him on her return. Maybe she's telling the truth that she has had no plastic surgery and opposes injections such as Botox. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but I'm skeptical, looking at as many photos as I have.
Almost every article I've read makes a point of saying Melania's a very nice and genuine person. I have no reason to doubt that. She clearly takes an enormous amount of time attending to her beauty and wardrobe. Almost every photo is flattering, and sexy. And she does smile in many of them. But she seems as prone to self-inflation as her husband.
This article about reporters being flown to a meet her and disputing that she was a "top" model is odd. And it's curious that the mayor of her small town of 5,000 people went to school with her but can't remember her, saying as did many others interviewed, she didn't stand out.
The mayor of Melania Trump’s hometown is embarrassed. At 47, Srečko Ocvirk is just a year older than the world’s most famous Slovenian. But even though he was a schoolmate of hers, the mayor of Sevnica said: “I have to be honest, I cannot place her.
On a tour of Sevnica, a pretty medieval town that clings to vine-clad hills rising from the Sava river, it quickly becomes clear that the young Melanija Knavs did not stand out from the collective consciousness of the time as someone who would rise to global fame. “In the socialist days we were all the same,” said a woman in the same age bracket as the 46-year-old.
One article says she was baptized, another says she wasn't. The Univision article says:
Viktor, Melania's father, was a member of the Communist Party. Several neighbors agree that he joined more out of convenience than conviction. That ensured fewer problems with the party after his daughter was baptized in a Catholic church, like many of the family's relatives.
The Guardian reports she and her sister were not baptized
due to her father's atheism.
In line with their father's officially atheist Communist beliefs, Melania and her sister were not baptized and did not make their first holy communion with the other children, a decision which did not escape Catholic relatives.
She told Parenting Magazine her mother was "in the fashion industry." Technically, that is true, I suppose, but it's an odd way to describe someone who worked in a state-owned factory cutting patterns, even if she was "promoted to pattern designer" at some point.
My point is who knows why she's not moving to the White House? Every article about her and every interview with her and people from her hometown, seem to vary in detail just a little too much for comfort. She hasn't said why she's not moving to the White House. Donald is speaking for her. And whatever reason Trump gives for anything, including this, deserves very close scrutiny, especially given the increased security costs, redirection of law enforcement personnel from their ordinary duties, and the traffic nightmares and disruption of life it will cause to New Yorkers and visitors. The job of the police should be to protect the entire community, not just two people in it.
