During the Trumps’ trip to Israel, Melania made it very clear that she did not want to hold her husband’s hand. After landing at Ben Gurion International Airport, former President Trump and first lady Melania Trump stepped down from Air Force One as they went to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife. On their walk across the tarmac in 2017, Donald attempted to touch his wife’s hand, but she violently batted it away.
Since Melania swatted away Donald’s hand in public, people have made jokes about it on social media. During his single term in office, liberals frequently attacked the president, making it a popular inside joke among them.
In January 2021, one person tweeted, “I’m going to miss watching Melania slap Donald’s hand away in every public appearance.” #InaugurationDay.”
The day after the attack in Israel, another person sent out a 2018 tweet that asked, “Is there a band called Melania Hand Swat yet?” If not, there should be.”
The swat of Melania’s hand as she removed Trump from her arms was interpreted by millions of people as a sign that their marriage was coming to an end. Reports have circulated since the start of the Trump administration that Melania is about to divorce her ex-husband. It made headlines when she decided not to move into the White House during the early months of his presidency and instead remained in New York while he worked for the nation.
Others, on the other hand, felt that the hand swat was not a big deal. These people believed that the public was overthinking it.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff said to The Washington Post in 2018: “She 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.”
However, according to a Trump insider, the story about when Melania swatted away her husband’s hand has changed. Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s former chief of staff, wrote a book in which she recounted the incident. Her book is entitled I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House – and she debunks the legend that surrounds why Melania smacked her husband’s hand away.
The book says, “At one point, while they were walking together down the red carpet, President Trump was a few steps ahead of Mrs. Trump. He reached out and slightly behind him with his left hand, apparently to try to take Mrs. Trump’s right hand. Without breaking her stride and with a flick of her wrist, she appeared to swat his hand away and kept walking….”
Grisham said, “For those who care to know, Mrs. Trump ‘slapped’ her husband’s hand away that day because she thought it was against protocol to hold hands at such a formal ceremony.”
Melania’s behavior is influenced by the kind of people she grew up around and what they taught her. Because Melania was “a rule follower,” according to her former chief of staff, the president was the one who “often tried to hold her hand or messed with her hands on purpose in front of the camera to irritate her.”
