The mystery of Melania Trump

While everybody at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee was preoccupied with Donald Trump’s triumphal story after the assassination attempt and the prospect of near-certain victory in November, I dwelled on that low-rumble question of the 2024 election: where’s Melania? She had not made one campaign appearance, nor been at her husband’s side for his myriad courtroom dates. A theme of the proceedings was the adoration of Trump family members for their patriarch. From the stage, his sons and their wives extolled him as the greatest family man of all time. But no Melania. Finally, at the last moment on Thursday, when her husband had already left the VIP box, sphinx-face as always, she showed. No explanation or excuses were offered – and never are.

For such a media-tuned showman as Trump, it surprised me that he would pick a 39-year-old as his vice president. From my view on the convention floor, it was a harsh contrast, the 78-year-old looking markedly more grizzled under his dye and tan since the shooting, and Vance, so baby-faced he’d needed to grow a beard for additional gravitas. Sitting among the Trump family, Vance looked remarkably like Trump’s sons with their beards. Perhaps Trump’s calculation was that Vance, who had undergone a dramatic conversion from contempt to obeisance, would be a similar sort of acolyte. Trump, if he wins, will re-enter the presidency already term-limited, a lame-duck from day one. He will surely have greater control of the inevitable power struggles around him with a devoted heir apparent.

Milwaukee, by the way, isn’t another hollowed-out industrial hulk in the Midwest, an example of Trump’s core message of economic failure, but a city whose 19th-century factories and brewery warehouses have been gentrified to house boutiques, coffee shops, galleries and the new professional class. It’s a haven for med tech and financial services companies, with realtors selling its Lake Michigan beachfront and water views.