Scandals Melania Trump Can Never Erase From Her Reputation

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Ever elusive, ever mysterious, and ever charismatic, Melania Trump's name will forever be etched in America's First Lady Hall of Fame. Since stepping into the political spotlight in 2016 when she first served as the country's First Lady, Melania has become a celebrity, almost rivaling her husband, Donald Trump, on the scrutiny scale. So much so that when Donald's tenure ended in 2021, Melania left with the lowest popularity rating for a first lady in recent history. But, of course, that was not too surprising, given the mirage of controversies that had trailed her.

For instance, in August 2020, Melania unveiled the newly renovated White House Rose Garden. First planted in 1913 by former First Lady Ellen Wilson and later famously redesigned by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962, the Rose Garden has long-held historical and aesthetic significance. Melania's renovation resulted in a trimmed, minimalist look. Unsurprisingly, the design was met with mixed reactions. "How awful, she has ruined a wonderful, beautiful expression of America," one person wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Here is the colorful, happy Rose Garden under Obama, and here is Melania's unveiling of the new garden, entirely devoid of color or joy," another critic commented, alongside before and after pictures of the garden.

Yet, the White House Rose Garden is not the only controversy Melania Trump has stirred up. Notably, her tenure as the First Lady of the United States has been marred by even more scandals.

In 2016, The New York Post published a story looking into Melania Trump's past modeling career and some controversial pictures she had taken. According to the outlet, in 1996, The First Lady posed nude for a defunct men's magazine, shortly after she arrived in the United States. While nudity can be uncomfortable for many, Melania reportedly remained confident throughout the risqué photoshoot session according to photographer, Alé de Basse­ville. He praised Melania's poise, adding he was "very proud of these pictures because they celebrate Melania's beauty.

This was not the only time Melania bared it all for the camera. In 2000, she appeared nude again, this time for a GQ interview that was allegedly orchestrated by Donald Trump, who was only her boyfriend at the time. "We were bombarded by requests to shoot Melania," Dylan Jones, former editor of GQ, explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "And so, given that she was obviously so keen to be featured in GQ, we came up with a rather kitsch and camp story for her to feature in."

While Melania's past modeling works continue to cast a controversial shadow on her public image and her husband's political career, the First Lady stands behind her choices. "Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work?" Melania questioned in a video shared on X. "We should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression," she added.

Of the many scandals, rumors that Melania Trump can't stand Donald Trump seem to have stuck the most. This speculation has lingered, thanks in part to the many awkward public interactions between the couple. Back in 2017, the Trumps made headlines during a diplomatic visit to Israel. While walking on a red carpet alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Melania seemingly batted her husband away after he reached to hold her hand. This tense moment garnered several reactions from social media. "If this is not a telltale sign that this marriage is either on the rocks or a sham, I don't know what is? Even she is sick of him," one person tweeted.

To make matters worse, Melania continued to hint at cracks in her marriage. Notably, the First Lady was absent from most of Donald's reelection campaign efforts and stayed silent amid his 2024 legal troubles. According to journalist Michael Wolff's book "All or Nothing," Melania's absence was deliberate. "Since the first indictment in New York, when Melania had simply laughed at the campaign's effort to get her to accompany her husband ('Nice try'), it had been clear that she wasn't going to show up," he wrote.

Melania has publicly opposed some of her husband's beliefs and policies, declaring in her 2024 memoir, "Melania," she believes in abortion rights. "Restricting a woman's right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body," she wrote in the book. 

In 2020, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, former senior advisor to Melania Trump, released voice recordings of the First Lady expressing her frustration about the media's criticism of her silence on Donald's controversial family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. "They say I'm complicit. I'm the same like him, I support him. I don't say enough, I don't do enough where I am," she ranted in the recording (via CNN). 

The recordings also included a profane rant about the outrage surrounding migrant children separated from their families. "Give me a fuc**** break," the First Lady said. "Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I can not go, I was trying get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn't have a chance – needs to go through the process and through the law."

In her 2024 memoir, "Melania," the First Lady recounted her distress after hearing kids were subjected to unfavorable living conditions at detention centers. "As a mother myself, I stressed: 'The government should not be taking children away from their parents.' I communicated with great clarity ... 'This has to stop.'" 

It's not every day that the First Lady gets accused of plagiarism, but that was the situation Melania Trump found herself in 2016. While speaking at the Republican National Convention, Melania delivered a powerful speech that sounded a too familiar. It was later discovered that a section of Melania's speech closely mirrored a speech Michelle Obama delivered at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. This did not go unnoticed, as social media users quickly pointed out the similarities. "Lol. I don't know how y'all take any Trump seriously at this point," one person commented on X. 

Responding to the backlash, Melania's team insisted the speech was inspired by her life experiences as an immigrant. "In writing her beautiful speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life's inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking," a statement shared at the time read. This did little to convince critics. Eventually, Meredith McIver, a scriptwriter on Melania's team, publicly took responsibility. "This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama," Mclver added in her statement, per NPR.

Years later, the First Lady reflected on the scandal in her memoir, admitting that she felt betrayed by her team for not properly vetting the speech. "Looking back, I realized that I had relied too much on others in this crucial endeavor," she wrote.

In 2018, Melania Trump stirred up another wave of controversy, only this time, not with words, but with a fashion item. During a visit to a migrant detention center, Melania donned a green jacket with the words "I really don't care. Do u?" sprawled across the back. 

Melania's jacket drew criticism, with many dubbing it as insensitive and out of touch, considering she was visiting displaced children. "How in the world is it ever OK to wear such a jacket? who told her this was OK?" one person questioned, while another social media user accused her of being tone deaf. But according to the First Lady, the message in the jacket was a way of standing up for herself.

In a interview with ABC News, Melania set the record straight, explaining that the jacket wasn't directed at the children she was visiting but rather the left-wing media who had long scrutinized her. "I want to show them I don't care," she said. "You could criticize, whatever you wanna say, you can say." The First Lady also admitted she enjoyed watching the media fuss about the jacket. "They got so obsessed. And I said, like you know what, that's what I'm talking about," she said, before adding that she prefers to be judged by her actions and not what she wears. 

Amid the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign, Melania Trump was at the center of another controversy, this time stirred up by her former aide, Stephanie Grisham.
Grisham, who first served as Trump's press secretary before becoming Melania's communications director and eventually chief of staff, shocked many when she appeared at the Democratic National Convention to endorse Kamala Harris, amongst other things. 

During her speech, Grisham reflected on her time in the White House, revealing she decided to leave her role after the first lady's apparent indifference to the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. "On Jan. 6, I asked Melania if we can at least tweet that 'while peaceful protest is the right of every American, there's no place for lawlessness or violence,' " Grisham recounted while displaying a screenshot of the pair's exchange which showed Melania's curt one-word response: "No."

Melania, however, pushed back in her memoir "Melania," claiming that she was unaware of the context behind the text at the time as she was busy archiving all of the decorations she had carried out in the White House. Still, Grisham maintained her stance, asserting that the First Lady had been informed of the violence at the Capitol but chose to stay quiet. "Melania knew what was going on at all times or she asked questions. Her response to me showed me enough that I immediately resigned and left the life I'd been devoted to for years," Grisham said, per The Hill.

Melania Trump took legal action against the Daily Mail in 2016 after it published an article about her modeling past. The since-deleted article alleged that back in the '90s, the First Lady worked for a modeling agency similar to a gentleman's club. The publication further suggested Melania worked as an escort catering to rich New York clients.

Although the Daily Mail later published a retraction, Melania filed a $150 million lawsuit, citing severe harm to her. "These defendants made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation," her attorney, Charles Harder, said in a statement to NBC News. "Their many lies include, among others, that Mrs. Trump supposedly was an 'escort' in the 1990s before she met her husband."

Seven months after filing the lawsuit, London's High Court ruled in favor of the First Lady, who accepted damages and an apology from the Daily Mail. According to the BBC, Melania received about $3 million in payment, covering damages and her legal fees. In a formal apology the Daily Mail wrote: "We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her."

In 2016, the Washington Post released an article detailing an inappropriate conversation Donald Trump had with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush back in September 2005. In the tape, Donald, who was on his way to the set of "Days of Our Lives" where he was scheduled to make a cameo, bragged about a failed attempt to seduce Nancy O'Dell, Bush's co-host. "I moved on her like a bit**, but I couldn't get there. And she was married," the real estate mogul said. "Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look."

The conversation took a more disturbing turn when Trump and Bush started making crude comments about actor Arianne Zucker, who was meant to escort them on set. Responding to the scandal, Donald released a statement in which he infamously dubbed the conversation as "locker room banter." Donald also apologized, insisting that "these words don't reflect who I am."

Years later, amid Trump's 2024 hush money trial, his former attorney, Michael Cohen, claimed Melania had encouraged Trump to downplay the remarks and go with the "locker room banter" narrative. "He told me that's what Melania had thought it was and use that in order to get control over the story and to minimize its impact on him and his campaign," Cohen shared, per Axios. However, while Melania neither confirmed nor denied this, she previously defended her husband's comments in an interview with CNN, insisting that he was only engaging in "boy talk."

In 2016, the Associated Press suggested Melania once worked in the United States illegally after first arriving in 1996 on a tourist visa. According to documents obtained by the outlet, before getting her work permit in October 1996, the First Lady had racked up over $20,000 in payment for 10 modeling jobs. Given her husband's anti-illegal immigration policies, this revelation raised a few eyebrows, with social media users calling out the hypocrisy. "The moment Melania started accepting jobs while on she was her tourist Visa she became an illegal alien," one person wrote on X.

Five years later, the former model was approved for the EB-1 visa, giving her a green card and making her a permanent resident of the United States. Controversy has surrounded Melania's approval for this EB-1 visa, which is primarily meant for those with proven extraordinary abilities. While she might have enjoyed a budding modeling career in Europe, there is nothing proving that the First Lady was actually qualified for this visa. "What did she submit? There are a lot of questions about how she procured entry into the United States,"  David Leopold, an immigration lawyer, told The Washington Post.

Melania has since laid the concerns to rest, declaring in a 2016 tweet that she "correctly went through the legal process when arriving in the USA."

Though the two have always appeared cordial in public, Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump have allegedly had a lot of tension between them over the years. In her unauthorized 2020 biography, "The Art of Her Deal," veteran journalist Mary Jordan shed light on the pair's strained relationship, revealing that things reportedly took a turn for the worse following Donald's victory in the 2016 election. According to Jordan, a cause of the friction was Ivanka's attempts to take on duties meant for the First Lady. "When Ivanka came to the White House, she really loved it immediately. Melania was up in New York. Ivanka, all of a sudden said, 'You know, I think we should rename the First Lady's office the First Family office.' And then, of course, Melania put her foot down and said, 'No way,'" Jordan explained. 

While neither Ivanka nor Melania has publicly confirmed or denied these claims, rumors of a power struggle have continued. In her memoir, "Melania and Me" former White House adviser Stephanie Wolkoff detailed how Ivanka attempted to dominate key moments at Donald Trump's inauguration. In retaliation, Melania allegedly devised Operation Block Ivanka to keeping her stepdaughter out of important pictures. "Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty," Wolkoff wrote, according to an excerpt in New York Magazine. "Melania was in on this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka shouldn't have made herself the center of attention in her father's inauguration."

Melania has also subtly hinted at the growing tension with her stepkids, writing in her memoir that while they may not always agree, "Each person is deserving of respect and understanding, regardless of disagreements."