The Art of Her Deal

ISBN 978-1-9821-1340-7

The Art of Her Deal by Mary Jordan was a surprising read. The best analogy might be how once in ancient Egypt, every Pharaoh would depict himself with abs that were like six-packs, and arms like small tree trunks while holding a spear showing how he subdued some other foreign nation. After awhile, though, a reformer by the name of Akhenaten came into view and demanded that the artists depict he and his wife as they actually were which included a Pharaoh with a bit of a pot-belly and some sinewy looking arms that were anything but muscular. Trump projects the former in his book, Melania’s book is the latter.

Perhaps if Melania had written it herself, the tone would be different. Maybe she would have told the story from a slightly different perspective than the one adopted here. This book starts off right into the thick of some of Donald Trump’s worst character flaws–having affairs and so on. It is not so much that one cannot discuss the foibles of a given person–if anything the odd thing is the magnification that happened(s) with the Trumps in general of whatever is perceived as a “bad trait”.

There are plenty of presidents who had affairs that had zero coverage of the issue, and some that only had coverage of the issue because they were reckless. Still others seemed to somewhat relish having the coverage and mystique of bedding certain people. JFK, for instance, bedded nearly the entire female population of DC.

While the candor is refreshingly honest, it is also curious. Why this angle and why so quickly?

This book does cover a lot of other interesting behind-the-scenes happenings in the White House that make some sense of what the news coverage was mirroring. Some of it makes perfect sense, and some of it feels a bit like paranoia that everyone is out to “get” the Trumps–although it is not as though the feeling is without ground. There is plenty of material in here to make one wonder exactly why the Trumps are treated as they are by the media and otherwise.

Even more interesting is the fact that the Trumps are what America usually aspires to be in its collective psyche. Melania was a model if not a supermodel, and Trump was as rich as Solomon. Usually America loves its celebrities as people that hold these positions are in some way living out the dream of what it means to be an American. Add in the fact the Trump’s father was an immigrant and came from “nothing” and you have the pieces of what are usually considered to be a “fairy tale”.

Not so in this book. Everybody is seemingly pissed alternatively at each other and then collectively against those who are trying to manipulate the Trump’s to some agenda or another. The feelings that jump off the pages are assuredly both “stress” and “pressure”. The media is a constant background noise which is seeking, it seems, to try to exaggerate or make mountains out of anthills. Sometimes they get just enough of the truth to do some damage, sometimes not.

There is a feeling here that one gets in reading this book whether intentional or not, where one starts to feel “Bad” for Melania in the sense that she is an immigrant and she is going through this meat-grinder we call America mostly while being silent and considered “foreign”. To be sure, this is not at all what she wants anyone to think. She wants people to see she is strong and tough and is more than just a pretty face. She surely has those qualities, but nonetheless, one feels bad as an American that Melania as someone “outside” of the US rises to the level of first lady and gets treated as she does by the entire country.

It is also interesting to see how much influence the First Lady has when she occupies the White House, and how that influence places Melania in a lot of difficult diplomatic positions. It seems like everyone is trying to assert their right to being an “influence on the King and Queen” and Melania does an admirable job of making sure the power rests back upon her, and her alone, where such power makes sense to be attributed as such.

While I am sure Trump has weaknesses as a man sitting in the top positions of power, it seems to me that if the Trumps were as ABUSIVE of power as everyone and everything else suggests, the book about Melania would have never covered a single controversial fact about either herself, or Trump.

Much emphasis is placed on how “cold” and “business-like” Melania is, while also in at least one case showing how nobody really fully respects her work or business skills even enough to figure out how to properly spell her name. I would imagine, after reading this book, if Melania is cold, it can only be a way of dealing with a world that is, most often, rather cold. Her response is to, it appears, go silent, and focus on the business at hand. There are certainly worse coping mechanisms.

If this book crosses your path, it is worth the read simply to fill in the blanks of a lot of missing information. While a certain suspicion should be cast on the motives of the author, it still fills in enough detail to allow the reader to understand a lot of the decisions being made in the Trump White House, and no, they were not as “crazy” as the media made them appear. In most cases, it seems more of a “sane response” to an “insane establishment”.