两本关于这位美国第一夫人的未经授权的传记打破了特朗普批评者对她的幻想，证实了梅拉尼娅对特朗普的支持。
What to make of the role of US first lady? Jacqueline Kennedy once noted that the name “sounds like a saddle horse”. Some would say the job is more suited to a show pony. Yet, even in this regard, Melania Trump has cut an unusual figure. Since her initial reluctance to move to the White House — she spent the first five months of her husband’s presidency in New York — she has emerged as an unlikely figurehead for the anti-Trump resistance.
如何理解美国第一夫人这个角色呢？杰奎琳•肯尼迪(Jacqueline Kennedy)曾说这个头衔“听起来像一匹骑乘马”。有些人会说这个位置更适合爱作秀的人。但即使就此而言，梅拉尼娅•特朗普(Melania Trump)也显得很不一般。从她一开始不愿搬到白宫——她丈夫就职总统后的前五个月她都是在纽约度过的——她就渐渐成为了反特朗普抵抗运动的一个不可思议的象征。
At the 2017 women’s march in Washington DC, a day after Mr Trump’s inauguration, a handful of protesters carried signs with the first lady’s image and slogans such as “Free Melania” and “Melania: Blink Twice If You Need Help”. Video clips of the new first couple’s interactions were analysed and dissected for proof that Ms Trump was unhappy in her marriage — a forced smile that shifted into a grimace; a hand swatted away as the couple descended the steps from Air Force One. For critics of the president, the image of Ms Trump as a captive princess was irresistible.
2017年，在特朗普就职典礼次日华盛顿特区爆发了女性大*行游**，一些抗议者举着印有这位第一夫人头像的标语牌，上书“解放梅拉尼娅”，“梅拉尼娅：如果你需要帮助请眨两下眼睛”等口号。人们对这对新任第一夫妇互动的视频进行分析解读，以找到蛛丝马迹证明梅拉尼娅在这段婚姻中并不幸福——从强颜微笑变成了苦笑；当这对夫妇从空军一号走下台阶时，有一只手被打飞了。对于特朗普的批评者来说，他们对一幅画面无法自拔：被俘虏的公主，梅拉尼娅。
Alas, that was a mirage — at least according to two unauthorised biographies of the first lady, the first by veteran Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan, the second by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the New York socialite and Ms Trump’s former friend. Ms Jordan’s The Art of Her Deal, and Ms Winston Wolkoff’s Melania and Me, offer insights into a carefully crafted, if sometimes baffling, exterior. (Remember the Zara jacket emblazoned with the slogan “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” she wore travelling to a detention facility for migrant children?)
可惜，这只是一种幻想——至少从两本未经授权的关于这位第一夫人的传记来看。第一本是《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)资深记者玛丽•乔丹(Mary Jordan)写的，第二本是纽约社交名媛、梅拉尼娅曾经的朋友斯蒂芬妮•温斯顿•沃尔科夫(Stephanie Winston Wolkoff)写的。乔丹的《她的交易艺术》(The Art of Her Deal)和温斯顿•沃尔科夫的《梅拉尼娅和我》(Melania and Me)让我们对一副精心打造的、有时甚至令人困惑的外在形象有了深刻认识。大家记不记得有一次她造访一所移民儿童拘留中心，穿着一件Zara的外套，上面印着“我真的不在乎，你在乎吗？”
The jacket, Ms Winston Wolkoff suggests, spelt out a message from Ms Trump to the media, according to a conversation the writer had with her not long after: she had officially given up on trying to please the press or any of her other critics. “They say I’m complicit, so I work on Christmas stuff. Who gives a *ucfk** about decorations?” she reportedly said. (A spokesperson has dismissed the book as “not truthful”.)
温斯顿•沃尔科夫表示，这件外套上写出了梅拉尼娅想对媒体传达的信息，根据作者在此事不久后与她的一次对话：她已经正式放弃取悦媒体或任何批评她的人。据称她当时说：“他们说我是同谋，所以我就搞搞圣诞节装饰。谁在乎装饰？”(一位发言人已将这本书斥为“不真实”。
Together, the books reassess preconceived ideas about Ms Trump and her level of agency in the White House and her marriage. It was Ms Trump, for instance, who encouraged her husband to run for president and to pick Mike Pence as his running mate, Ms Jordan writes. She adds that while outsiders saw the delayed move to Washington as proof of a corroding marriage, Ms Trump in fact used the delay as leverage to secure a more generous renegotiation of her prenuptial agreement for herself and her school-aged son.
这两本书重新评价了人们对梅拉尼娅、她在白宫自主的能力以及她的婚姻的一些先入之见。例如，乔丹写道，正是梅拉尼娅鼓励她丈夫竞选总统，并选择迈克•彭斯(Mike Pence)作为他的竞选伙伴。乔丹还说尽管外界认为推迟搬到华盛顿证明了其婚姻日益恶化，但事实上梅拉尼娅把这件事当作筹码，以重新谈判他们的婚前协议，为她自己和她仍处于学龄的儿子争取到更有利的条款。
The authors also note a simmering rivalry between Ms Trump and the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, whom the first lady nicknames “princess”, according to both accounts. Ms Winston Wolkoff recalls in detail the elaborate planning that went into the seating arrangement at the inauguration ceremony (which she helped to organise) so that Ms Trump would obscure her stepdaughter from direct view of the cameras.
两位作者还提到了梅拉尼娅和特朗普的大女儿伊万卡(Ivanka)——据这两位表示梅拉尼娅称其为“公主”——之间日趋激烈的对抗。温斯顿•沃尔科夫回忆了一个细节，就职典礼——她帮助组织的——上的座位安排是经过精心设计的，这样梅拉尼娅就能挡住她的继女不被镜头直接拍到。
Not all friends have such access beyond the curtain. “The hologram that she’s created leaves so much unknown that people view her in different ways”, writes Ms Jordan. As one acquaintance confesses to the author: “I don’t even know if she goes to the bathroom.” And insiders are not necessarily admitted forever, as shown by the cautionary tale of Ms Winston Wolkoff, a member of Ms Trump’s staff until she was “thrown under the bus” over inquiries about the inauguration’s cost.
并不是所有的朋友都能成为这样的入幕之宾。“她营造的全息影像留下了如此多的未知，以至人们对她的看法大相径庭，”乔丹写道。正如一位熟人向这位作者坦言的那样：“我甚至不知道她上不上厕所。”而亲信不一定永远被当作亲信，温斯顿•沃尔科夫的故事就警示了这一点。温斯顿•沃尔科夫曾是梅拉尼娅的工作人员，在特朗普就职典礼的经费问题遭到调查时她“被当成替罪羊”。
Still, the two accounts are likely to quash any last hopes Trump critics have of his wife as a secret ally. “We learn through these books that she is very much on board with him and his policies,” says Kate Andersen Brower, the author of three books about the White House and a chronicler of first ladies. As far back as 2011, she notes, Ms Trump defended “birtherism”, the conspiracy theory promoted by her husband that former president Barack Obama was not born in the US.
不过，对于那些将梅拉尼娅当作秘密盟友的特朗普批评者来说，这两本书可能会打消他们的最后希望。“我们从这些书中了解到，她非常支持他和他的政策，”曾写过三本关于白宫的书，以及一本第一夫人编年史的凯特•安德森•布劳尔(Kate Andersen Brower)说。她指出早在2011年，梅拉尼娅就曾为“出生论”(birtherism)辩护，这是她丈夫宣扬的一个阴谋论，即美国前总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)不是在美国出生的。
Besides, Ms Trump had already warned them. “People, they don’t really know me, people think and talk about me, like, ‘Oh, Melania, oh, poor Melania’,” she told the television host Anderson Cooper on the eve of the 2016 election. “Don’t feel sorry for me.” On that front it seems, the first lady may finally get her wish.
更何况，梅拉尼娅已经警告过他们。2016年大选前夕她曾对电视主持人安德森•库珀(Anderson Cooper)说：“人们并不真正了解我，他们想象我、谈论我，比如‘哦，梅拉尼娅，哦，可怜的梅拉尼娅’。不要为我难过好吗。”就此而言，这位第一夫人可能终于要实现她的愿望了。