politics

Rumours of Melania planning to divorce Donald Trump won't go away. Here's exactly what we know.

"[Melania] will be in the south of France on a really big yacht with a really big brim hat doing what she's always wanted to do: nothing."

Those are the words of Melania Trump's former best friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was explaining to 60 Minutes in September what the First Lady of the United States will do if her husband loses the presidential election on November 3. (Spoiler alert: he did.)

Watch: Melania Trump 'swats away' Donald's hand. Post continues below. 


Video via Twitter.

Whilst her husband is infamous for his loud and brash persona, Melania Trump herself has kept a wall of ambiguity around her. Now that his loss is reality, the mystery that surrounds Melania and her marriage is only intensifying, as whispers of divorce rumours escalate. 

With less than three months left in the White House for the powerful pair, what exactly does their future entail?

Here's what we know. 

Melania Trump and Donald Trump's prenuptial agreement.

In 2017, when Donald Trump was first sworn into office, his wife Melania did not move into the White House for five months.

The official message was that she wanted to wait until their son, Barron Trump, had finished the school year. But a well-sourced book by Washington Post reporter, Mary Jordan, alleged this year that the delay was actually due to renegotiations of her prenuptial agreement with the president.

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“She wanted proof in writing that when it came to financial opportunities and inheritance, Barron would be treated as more of an equal to Trump’s oldest three children,” Jordan writes in The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.

Donald Trump with wife Melania Trump and their son, Barron Trump. Image: Getty. In 2018, Town and Country magazine spoke to divorce attorneys about what their prenuptial agreement likely entailed, with Jacqueline Newman, managing partner at Berkman Bottger Newman & Rodd, speculating that Melania will be the primary caretaker of their son Barron, 14, and will get money for child support.

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She told the magazine: "My guess is that she would get primary custodial rights and he would get access whenever he happens to be in town.

"In this situation, if she has $50 million, she can afford to buy something. But $50 million, while it’s definitely a lot of money, in New York City, for what she’s used to, she wouldn’t be able to replicate what she has now. He probably had a good sense of what kind of lifestyle they’d be living, so I would imagine the payout would be fairly generous."

What do former friends say of the Trump divorce rumours?

The divorce rumours have in part been pedalled by former friends of Melania and Donald Trump, who have been married for 15 years. 

President Trump’s former political aide Omarosa Manigault Newman recently claimed a divorce was on the horizon. Daily Mail quoted Newman as saying: "Melania is counting every minute until he is out of office and she can divorce."

"If Melania were to try to pull the ultimate humiliation and leave while he’s in office, he would find a way to punish her."

Newman, who is the author of the 2018 tell-all book Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House, has previously spoken about the unrest of their relationship.  

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Donald and Melania Trump in October 2020. Image: Getty.   “It’s a very strange marriage. I’m very cautious to comment on the dynamics of a marriage because you never know what goes on behind closed doors,” she told British breakfast show Lorraine in October

"But I have known this couple since they were dating, they got married a year after The Apprentice aired.

"What I have observed in the last 17 years would make your head spin. Sometimes they like each other but sometimes [Melania Trump] is repulsed by him.”

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Newman is not the only source who claims to have first-hand knowledge of a rift between the pair. Earlier this year, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump's aforementioned former best friend and trusted adviser, said in her book that the pair have a "transactional marriage". 

In 2019, CNN White House correspondent Kate Bennett also released an unauthorised biography on Melania in which she confirmed the couple sleep in separate rooms in the White House. 

Melania rejecting Trump's hands...

Ultimately, though, speculation of their unhappy marriage has largely been born out of public moments of the pair. Whether it's Melania seemingly fake smiling, or her rejecting her husband's hand, the moments have all been headline-worthy. 

Here's all those memorable times. 

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Of course, only time will tell what the future holds for the two. Melania has built her image on her enigmatic qualities, and it's likely that won't change soon. 

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Feature image: Getty/Mamamia.


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