Former President Donald Trump is spending his days in a Manhattan courtroom facing charges that stem from accusations of a hush-money payment to pornography actress Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair just months after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron. Melania is notably not in the audience.
This is not the first allegation of Trump cheating on Melania; he allegedly paid to cover up a separate affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal while Melania was pregnant.
Sure, Melania is still standing by her man – the Trumps remain married, and Melania has been doing some light campaigning for her husband’s presidential election bid – but she isn’t spending her days at a trial that came about in part because he is accused of cheating on her and trying to cover it up. (Trump has denied the affairs with Daniels and McDougal, and has pleaded not guilty to the hush money charges.)
Good for her.
The days of women standing up next to their philandering husbands should be well in the rear view. Marriages and other long-term relationships are complicated. The human beings in them make mistakes, and also extend forgiveness and grace.
Melania’s decision to stay married to Donald despite very public evidence of an affair is her choice to make. (Her decision to stay married to a man who very publicly cheated on his first wife, is virulently misogynistic and has stoked hatred of immigrants tells us something else about her character.) But staying married to him through affair allegations and playing the role of publicly forgiving wife by standing next to him, or being in the gallery at his trial, are two different things.
Many wives of politicians and prominent men have endured the humiliating spectacle of standing silently next to their unfaithful husbands as those men apologized to them and to the public (these affairs, after all, often involved a period of lying to the press or other watchdogs). Bill Clinton, perhaps the most notorious, faced impeachment for lying under oath about his in-office sexual liaisons. And decades later, the Clintons are still married.
When former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican with a record of opposing gay rights legislation, was caught in an airport restroom allegedly soliciting sex by tapping his foot under a stall (many other allegations of Craig pursuing or having sex with men were subsequently made), his wife appeared next to him at a news conference in which he announced his resignation – a decision he later reversed.
Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer used the same playbook after he was caught paying sex workers. His wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, stood stoically next to him at a press conference where he admitted his bad deeds. (They later divorced).
So did Huma Abedin, wife of New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner; Abedin appeared at Weiner’s side as he publicly apologized for sending graphicly sexual messages to women on social media (as of 2022, the couple said they were finalizing their divorce). Former Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, a “family values” Republican, was also caught paying for sex workers as part of the DC Madame scandal; his wife Wendy also appeared next to him at the de rigueur apologetic presser.
That scene – the tense-jawed politician issuing his mea culpa, the tight-lipped wife standing frozen on the side – is such a cliché that it was the opening scene of the television series “The Good Wife,” premised on the romantic betrayal of a political spouse and what she does next.
I suspect many women – and I am one of them – have watched these spectacles and thought: She should really be at the spa or away for a weekend in Paris with her friends while he cleans up his own mess.
That doesn’t mean that an affair must lead to divorce. It does mean that many women who have been cheated on by their very prominent husbands no doubt feel immense pressure from handlers, publicists, staffers and those same men to do what they can to help salvage those men’s reputations and careers.
An absent spouse in a moment of marital-turned-political crisis is bad optics. A woman who stands by her husband sends a clear signal: If she can forgive him, maybe voters can, too.
One wonders what would happen if the roles were reversed, if the female half of a prominent duo had an affair and had to publicly atone. Would many men endure the humiliation of standing silently by their apologetic wives? Would Donald stay married to Melania if she faced multiple very public affair accusations?
And to be clear, Melania is not abandoning Donald. She’s just not showing up for lengthy court hearings. She is on the campaign trail for him, albeit in a fairly limited capacity, and has long allowed him to dominate the limelight. He is running for president again, so she’s ostensibly on board with his political aspirations – including his authoritarian plans for the nation. She is a bit of a cipher – it’s never been clear whether she has much in the way of political opinions at all – but she is willing to stay married to her husband despite his abhorrent character.
Melania, in other words, is many things at once: an allegedly wronged wife who seems, laudably, to be refusing to roleplay silent, present forgiveness. She is also a woman with the capacity to make her own choices about her marriage and her life, and who chooses to stay married to – and assist in the political aspirations of – one of the most obscene and dangerous men to ever enter American politics.
