The embargo on any sort of below-the-surface dive into the nature of the Trump marriage appears to be breaking.
This embargo began, more or less, in 2016 after the U.K.’s Daily Mail agreed to retract its claim that Melania Trump had worked as an escort before her marriage. Following that, the media treated the Trumps with pretty much the same general courtesy brush it had extended other presidential marriages, despite how much this one departed from form and practice.
If it was out of the norm, the look-away rationale was that, even for presidents, personal and professional lives exist in separate spheres.
Ten years into this obvious estrangement and sham arrangement, leading news outlets haven’t much touched it. Regime Change, the New York Times book on the second Trump term, barely mentions Melania.
And yet, the marriage has certainly risen high among the can’t-miss anomalies of the Trump White House. Melania Trump’s recent appearance, after many weeks out of public sight, to promote a commercial sponsorship opened with a tease—or perhaps more pointedly, a taunt: “I heard you missed me. Well, here I am.” It was a clear acknowledgment that everybody understands the make-believe situation—and that the joke is on them.