by In 2017, the world watched as Melania swatted her husband’s hand away when they got to Ben Gurion International Airport to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife. Twitter has still been abuzz about the incident, with one person tweeting in January 2021, “I’m gonna miss watching Melania swat back Donald’s hand in every public moment. #InaugurationDay.”
Another person wrote in 2018, “Is there a band called Melania Hand Swat yet? If not, there should be.”
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Rumors began swirling that their marriage was in trouble, with others speculating that the hand swat was not a big deal.
In 2018, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff told The Washington Post: “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.”
Now, former chief of staff for Melania Trump, Stephanie Grisham, has written a book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House, offering a new explanation for the viral moment.
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The book reads, “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….”
According to Grisham, this is why Melania swatted her husband’s hand away: “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.”
Grisham maintains that Melania is “a rule follower,” and that the former president “often tried to hold her hand or messed with her hands on purpose in front of the camera to irritate her.”
Photo Credit: Inside Edition
There were moments similar to the 2017 hand swat, with Yahoo! recounting six separate times where Melania seemingly rejected Trump’s advances, all caught on camera and widely dissected on social media by both supporters and critics.
However, there were times when they held hands. With People tweeting about such a moment in 2018: “No Swat Here! Melania Trump Reaches for the President’s Hand Before His Visit with the Queen.”
In October 2020, they held hands at a campaign event in Florida, including public displays of affection – an embrace and a kiss. In February 2020, Fabiosa published a story about a “tender” moment between the couple, who got married in 2005.
