Melania steps out of Ivanka’s shadow as expert spots new trait | US | News
First Lady Melania Trump stole the spotlight Thursday during a White House event promoting the Supporting the Future initiative.
At the event, the First Lady appeared relaxed as she discussed the initiative designed to “give young Americans in or out of the foster care system the tools they need to become successful adults.”
Body language expert Judi James said Melania appears to have gained confidence since President Trump’s first term in office.
“The fact that Donald and Melania appear to be switching roles for this event may just be some sort of body language optical illusion, but it’s surprising how well this role reversal works,” James explained.
“Compared to Trump’s status and signals of confidence when he became President for his first term in office, when Ivanka relegated him to the choir shadow and his rather hard-nosed demeanor showed that he hated every minute of the spotlight.”
However, James noted that the First Lady “appears to be elegant, self-confident and even able to cast her own husband into the shadow of the choir with this look.”
‘Look of respect’
James observes that although her husband was commander-in-chief, it was actually “Melania who went directly to the dais, while Donald stood silently behind and to one side, looking at his wife with a respectful look.”
James goes on to observe that the president’s body language “veers towards ‘proud wife’ poses in similar situations, but this time he adopts the look of a staff member with shoulders slightly hunched and smiles humbly and his eyes directed to the floor.”
The expert also notes how Melania’s “energy and confident movements contrast with Trump’s heavier, slower style, giving her an advantage in terms of dynamic leadership signals.”
‘There are thorns in his side’
The First Lady and her first daughter reportedly have a strained relationship following a Daily Mail article claiming Melania was glad the Miami socialite did not accompany her father on a trip to the United Kingdom.
Sources close to the First Lady suggested that the First Lady was pleased that her stepdaughter, whom she privately described as a “trouble”, would not be able to attend the visit.
“[Ivanka] Mary Jordan, the First Lady’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, explained when she said of the pair: “Melania didn’t need a second First Lady, which Ivanka had sort of become.”
Ivanka contest
According to Jordan, Melania felt that Ivanka, 44, was constantly competing with her. While the two women avoided publicly criticizing each other, those around them documented the friction and described a tense dynamic in which both constantly sought the president’s attention.
During Trump’s first official visit to Britain, Ivanka and her husband Jared met the late Queen Elizabeth II. He pushed to appear alongside the President and First Lady at the welcoming ceremony at Buckingham Palace, hosted by Elizabeth. But Melania flatly refused, insisting that protocol required them to arrive with other staff, according to Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s former White House chief of staff and press secretary.
“This is inappropriate, it should just be the president and me,” Melania said, according to Grisham. Publicly, Ivanka has opted for a cautious approach of remaining silent when she has nothing to contribute.
family tension
During a nearly two-hour January interview with The Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast, the First Daughter conspicuously made no mention of the First Lady. Vanity Fair said of the interview, “Sometimes the sharpest way to talk about someone is not to talk about them at all.”
“She did not mention her stepmother, Melania Trump, during the lengthy interview, but she lavished praise on her mother, the late Ivana Trump, as ‘an incredible role model, in almost mythological terms, of what a working woman can be’ and ‘incredibly attractive.'”
