Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In India, we would call it election ke side-effects!
The world, particularly America, waits with bated breath if and when Donald Trump leaves the White House. And if and when his third wife Melania dumps Trump by divorcing him!
Officially, Trump has not yet been declared defeated in the November 3 Presidential election—it is only the hyper-activist American media which has done so! Everybody is speculating if he would gracefully leave the White House by January 20 to make way for his successor Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States. Or, whether he would try to stage a coup to continue to stay in the White House as he has been indicating?
His pot of woes, however, is not limited to the White House or politics. Even his current wife and First Lady of the US, Melania, 50, is rumored to be considering to divorce him. If she dumps Donald, 74, she could walk away with a ‘settlement’ worth USD 50 million, media reported.
In the event of a divorce, she could potentially get USD 1 million for each year of her age, 50!
The Slovenian-American fashion model had become a permanent resident of the US in 2001. She married Trump, then a controversial business tycoon, in 2005. Their son, Barron, was born in 2006. Her native language is not English as she was born in the then Yugoslavian state of Slovenia.
Speculations are rife in the US due to some events in the recent past.
On Veterans’ Day (November 11), during President Trump’s first public engagement since the election loss, pictures of Melania ignoring social distancing norms, as well as her husband, emerged. She was seen walking arm-in-arm with a serviceman and stood away from the President during the wreath-laying ceremony, according to a Daily Mail report.
Unlike last year’s Veterans Day, when she stood next to her husband, this year Melania continued to hold on to the soldier’s arm throughout the service.
She was escorted by the masked military man and sheltered under an umbrella with him during the visit. Neither Trump nor his wife wore masks.
Speculations, attributed to a former Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, claimed that the couple’s marriage could end in divorce when their term in the White House ends in January. “Melania is counting every minute until he is out of the office and she can divorce. If Melania were to try to pull the ultimate humiliation and leave while he’s in office, he would find a way to punish her,” she was reported to have said.
But Melania appeared to back Donald when she talked about illegal votes on Twitter, a reference to Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud.
But she did slam Newman, a former apprentice contestant and ex-political advisor to Trump, for saying that Melania was ‘repulsed’ by Donald.
Newman also claimed that Trump could get angry with Melania’s decision to divorce him and try to revoke his wife’s citizenship, according to a news portal, Mirror.co.uk.
Stephanie Wolkoff, who worked as a senior advisor to Melania, claimed that the Trumps had separate bedrooms in the White House and that their marriage was ‘transactional’.
Melania’s friends claimed that she had never expected Donald Trump to win in 2016 and burst into tears when he did.
Amid these rumors, the divorce law experts have begun counting the ‘compensation/settlement’ amount if and when she divorces Trump. She could potentially get USD 50 million, according to Berkman Bottger Newman and Rodd managing partner Jacqueline Newman, media reports said
In Trump’s previous two marriages, the settlements were generally arrived at as per the couples’ prenuptial agreements.
His second wife, Marla Maples (1993 – 1999), was reportedly given a pay-out of USD 2 million after contesting the prenuptial, while his first wife, Ivana Trump (1977 – 1992), may have received US$14 million, a mansion in Connecticut, a New York apartment and access to Mar-a-Lago once a year, after also contesting the prenuptial agreements.
According to Mary Jordan, who authored a book on Melania, the First Lady has acted to ensure her son from Donald, Barron, would receive the same benefits as Trump’s other children from his previous marriages.
Washington Post reporter Jordan said Melania had renegotiated her pre-nuptial agreements prior to joining Trump in the White House after his 2016 election.
“She wanted proof in writing that when it came to financial opportunities and inheritance, Barron would be treated as more of an equal to Trump’s oldest three children,” Jordan wrote.
