Clock watcher: Omarosa claims Melania Trump counting down until she can file for divorce
Melania Trump begins divorce countdown. Photo: Getty / TND
He’s already lost the top job, and now sources say Donald Trump may be facing the end of his marriage to Melania Trump.
Trump’s former aide and The Apprentice star, Omarosa Manigault Newman, said the couple’s “very strange” relationship is on the rocks and the First Lady is waiting for an out.
“Melania is counting every minute until he is out of office and she can divorce,” Newman said.
“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.”
Bet Melania is on the phone to her divorce lawyer right now #PresidentElectJoeBiden #TrumpMeltdown pic.twitter.com/2QgwR38Ame
— Jonathon Bright 🇺🇦 (@jb_1969) November 6, 2020
This isn’t the first time Newman, who wrote tell-all memoir Unhinged, has hinted at turmoil between the Trumps.
Last month she appeared on British breakfast show Lorraine and said Mrs Trump sometimes found her husband repulsive.
“It’s a very strange marriage. I’m very cautious to comment on the dynamics of a marriage because you never know what goes on behind closed doors,” Newman said on the show.
“But I have known this couple since they were dating. They got married a year after The Apprentice aired.
What I have observed in the last 17 years would make your head spin. Sometimes they like each other, but sometimes [Mrs Trump] is repulsed by him.
Another Trump insider, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who wrote tell-all Melania and Me about her 15-year friendship with the First Lady, said it was “a transactional marriage”, with the couple already sleeping in separate bedrooms in the White House.
Wolkoff also claimed Mrs Trump was renegotiating the terms of her post-nuptial agreement to ensure their 14-year-old son, Barron, will get an equal share of the Trump fortune.
Tears, but not tears of joy …
Insiders have long suggested the relationship between the Trumps had soured, with many looking to Mrs Trump’s frosty interactions with the POTUS as proof.
On multiple occasions during his four-year term, Mrs Trump was papped pulling away from her husband’s attempts at PDA.
Melania – once again – wanting nothing to do with Trump’s small hands… https://t.co/kjf7rv1EFC
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) August 17, 2020
She was reportedly unsupportive of her husband’s bid for presidency in the 2016 election, and is said to have burst into tears when he won.
Michael Wolff, who wrote Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, said the win came as a total surprise.
“Melania was in tears – and not of joy,” Wolff said.
Then there was her reluctance to move into the White House, waiting five months to join her husband in their new home.
At the time, Mrs Trump insisted she was waiting for Barron to finish school.
melania getting her divorce papers ready pic.twitter.com/Fbice2Lgox
— e (@svpphirestvr) November 7, 2020
The FLOTUS has insisted there has never been trouble in paradise, and the two have a “great relationship”.
But while she may be comfortable rebuffing his advances and sharing separate bedrooms, it’s unlikely we will ever hear her take a swipe at her husband.
Like his second wife, Marla Maples, it is likely Mrs Trump is subject to a similar prenuptial agreement that prohibits her from publishing a book, publicly criticising Mr Trump or making disparaging comments about him.