Melania and Donald Trump, who have been married for 20 years, have stood by each other through thick and thin. From viral reports of infidelity, to Trump’s conviction in hush money case, to loss in the 2020 presidential elections, the couple has faced many storms together. And each time, speculations of troubles in their marriage have surfaced.
Even after Trump returned to power in 2025, his married life with his Slovenian wife has been under scrutiny. Rumors escalated when journalist and author Michael Wolff claimed last week that Donald Trump and Melania are “separated”.
Wolff unapologetically said, “I think maybe we can more specifically say they live separate lives. They are separated. The president of the United States and the first lady are separated.”
Fans had every reason to believe Wolff’s revelation. After all, Melania has been missing from the White House since January when Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. The report that Melania has stayed at the White House for less than 14 days in the last 100 days, paired with Wolff’s comment, made fans certain of the complications in the married life of Donald and Melania Trump.
However, the White House had to come forward to dismiss the viral claims and assure the fans that the couple isn’t having any marital problems. In a statement to The Independent, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung called Wolff “a blithering idiot” while adding that he has been “widely discredited due to his blatant lies and fabrications.”
This isn’t the first time White House had to clarify the status of Melania and Donald Trump’s marriage. The speculations have surfaced so many times in the last one decade that either Melania has to herself defend her relationship, or let the White House do it on their behalf.
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In 2018, when Donald Trump faced heat in the Stormy Daniels scandal, media reports claimed troubles in his marriage. It was reported that they were living individual lives and even had separate bedrooms. Eventually, Melania’s then-senior advisor, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, came forward to shut down the floating rumors. In a chat with The Washington Post, she said, “She (Melania) is a dignified, private person, and she’ll deal with her personal life in private and it’s no one’s business. They are not that couple that holds hands just because; she is old-world European and it’s not who she is.”
The rumors went wild in 2019 as it was alleged that Trump was using Melania’s body double for public appearances. The White House had to intervene once again, dismissing the claims as “fake news.”
Fast forward to 2024, we witnessed another ex-White House employee defending the couple’s relationship. During her testimony in Trump’s hush money trial, Hope Hicks stated that Donald Trump wanted to shield Melania from learning about allegations of his affair with Karen McDougal. Hicks, who served as a PR executive and political advisor to the Trump administration in his first term, claimed that he tried to hide it because of how much he cares and respects her.
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She said during the trial, “President Trump really values Mrs. Trump’s opinion and she doesn’t weigh in all the time but when she does it’s really meaningful to him. He really, really respects what she has to say. I think he was really concerned about what the perception of this would be and, yeah, I know that was weighing on him.”
She added that Trump didn’t want his family to “be hurt” by the stories that were floating around.
Earlier this year, when Wolff wrote in his latest book that Melania “f—— hates” Donald Trump, Steven Cheung came to the couple’s rescue. In a statement to The Daily Beast, he called Wolff “lying sack of s–t.”
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His statement reads, “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
These instances make us wonder if one of the major tasks of the White House is to ensure that people don’t gossip about the relationship of the Trumps. And every time it happens, one or the other employee of Trump’s administration stands up to convince us that their relationship couldn’t be more perfect.
Scroll down for some pictures of Donald and Melania Trump:
Melania and Donald Trump got married in 2005.
The couple has an age gap of 24 years.
