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Is Melania Trump her husband's greatest victim or his biggest enabler?

Of all the lunacies of the post-fact world, my favourite is the fiction being peddled that "left-wing elites" in the media and elsewhere revealed their horrendous bias by expressing dismay at the prospect of a Trump presidency.

Voicing some discomfort at the prospect of a pussy-grabbing protector-isolationalist becoming leader of the free world does not a left-wing loon make.

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Trump sneaks peek as Melania votes

As Donald Trump's wife casts her ballot, the presidential hopeful appears to check she's making the right choice. Vision courtesy ABC News 24.

Any political candidate who has been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan is leaving a lot of room out there on their left flank. You don't have to be Che Guevara to have inadvertently found yourself sitting in that space, desolate in the knowledge that the best you can do to stop the juggernaut is to un-follow The Donald on Twitter.

But progressive and free-thinking Trump first-responders (and since last week, we are all, from Senegal to Seattle, Trump first-responders) do have a problem with Melania Trump, first lady-elect, the woman ostensibly closest to the man but at the same time strangely incidental to him.

Melania – Slovenian immigrant, mother, and "perfect 10", to use the technical, Trumpian term – is either her husband's greatest victim or his worst enabler.

She is definitely an important source of what the white-coat doctors call "narcissistic supply", but she may also be that woman with a desperate look in her eyes madly trying to blink her way into communicating that she needs to escape this nightmare way more than we do.

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Feminists are at a loss as to how to deal with Melania because it's generally uncool to mock blameless wives and mothers, and yet, this is a woman whose entire life appears predicated on the fact that she is hot. Which is not what Mary Wollstonecraft et al fought in the trenches for.

How do we solve a problem like Melania?

Feminists are at a loss as to how to deal with first lady  Melania Trump.
Feminists are at a loss as to how to deal with first lady Melania Trump. Photo: AP

Images of Trump frankly spying on his wife as she cast her vote on November 8 were telling. Did he expect her to vote Democrat? Since winning the vote, otherwise disempowered women have used the privacy of the ballot box as a way to rebel secretly against their husbands, but poor Melania was not afforded this inalienable right.

Perhaps she wanted to put a nice big tick in the Hillary box but was forced to divert at the last minute when she felt her husband's reptilian eyes boring into her back.

Donald Trump with his wife, Melania, and their son Barron on election night.
Donald Trump with his wife, Melania, and their son Barron on election night. Photo: New York Times

Funnily enough, the next day the entire world woke up with that same feeling.

The little we do know about Melania has been communicated by mostly her husband. He began lobbying for her back in 2000 when she was his new girlfriend and he pestered the then editor of GQ, Dylan Jones, to feature her nude in his magazine.

Melania Trump joined outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama for tea at the White House.
Melania Trump joined outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama for tea at the White House. Photo: Chuck Kennedy

More recently, Melania was the subject of a GQ profile that revealed she had a secret half-brother in Slovenia but told us precisely nothing about the kind of person she is. She spoke in cliches and revealed nothing of herself except for the fact that she sticks to her "role" and would never ask her husband to change a nappy or put their son to bed.

Trump says Melania will make an "unbelievable first lady".

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks at his wife Melania as they cast their votes.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks at his wife Melania as they cast their votes. Photo: AP

The very title of "first lady" is bold confirmation of what many workplaces, and (dare I say it),  society as a whole, have been slow to acknowledge – that men holding down serious jobs can do them properly only if they have a woman behind the scenes sponging up the detritus of daily life.

In the case of an average account manager, or a business owner, that means your wife pays the internet bill and makes sure the children's hair is sufficiently crazy for the school's annual "Crazy Hair Day" (or as it's known to one of my circle, "F---ing Crazy Hair Day").

Illustration: Cathy Wilcox
Illustration: Cathy Wilcox 

Presidential wives probably have staff to take care of Crazy Hair Day, but they would have many other irritating and time-consuming help-meet tasks, like scheduling the secret service detail around school assembly, and arranging state dinner seating plans to minimise awkwardness between guests experiencing diplomatic conflict.

In Melania's case, seating arrangements will be further complicated by the fact that her husband is on record as being very gropey. Angela Merkel or Teresa May will want to watch their legs sub-table, particularly given Trump would probably deny any groping not on the facts, but on the justification that neither leader is a "10" so why would he bother?

First ladies are permitted, of course, to take up a few of their own causes, and Melania has said she will focus on the scourge of online bullying, prompting many to wonder aloud whether she had glanced at her own husband's Twitter account recently.

In the post-truth world it would not be surprising if Melania decides next week to take up the banner for victims of sexual assault, or become patron of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

People will call her a hypocrite but perhaps, underneath the Barbie-doll bust and the mask-like features, she is trolling her husband in open cover.

It's the only place she has to hide. 

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