MICHAEL WOLFF: Why does no one dare ask the obvious questions about Donald and Melania Trump’s marriage?

White House weddings invariably take on a significance greater than themselves. They project a set of values, both moral and political. They provide a feeling of stability.

We assume that they function in the same way as ours, with good days and bad days – a shared domestic experience that we would like to have in common with our leaders.

Usually anyway.

Because for all its glaring anomalies and strangeness, the media has generally not shied away from being nosy and has largely refrained from asking questions about Donald and Melania Trump’s marriage.

In 2021, as I wrote my last book on the Trump presidency, “Landslide,” I attended a dinner on the patio of Mar-a-Lago hosted by the former president and first lady.

They behaved as if they were the bride and groom at a wedding, each greeting an endless stream of well-wishers who came to our table throughout the evening, but without much apparent conversation or even familiarity with each other.

On Sunday, at Madison Square Garden, just nine days before the election, Melania made her first and last speaking appearance during her husband’s campaign.

After she welcomed him onstage in New York, he gave her a stiff, double-cheeked air kiss. It seemed she couldn’t keep her face far enough away.

“It could have been a bargaining chip,” one member of the Trump inner circle remarked to me this week. ‘Doubt until the last moment.’

Melania, by the way, has not appeared on the campaign trail in any significant way for her husband in almost two years of active campaigning – a heavy duty, to be sure, but a basic requirement for a political wife.

She has organized only two private Republican fundraisers. Her appearance at this summer’s Republican National Convention was minimal, to say the least. She arrived on the last evening and was only seated in the VIP box after her husband had left it.

After his speech, she appeared on stage with the rest of the Trump clan and greeted him with another awkward kiss.

It’s the same de rigueur for every politician who is taken to court to have his wife next to him. Donald Trump has been in more courts, both as criminal and civil defendants, than any politician in American history since the start of his 2024 campaign. But his wife was never by his side.

It’s entirely possible that, instead of this being a blatant public rebuke, there could be a kinder interpretation here: Melania is doing her own thing, busy with her own work and interests.

But it’s hard to believe that statement, considering so many of Trump’s trials have been about his sex life.

The allegations, of course, include sexual abuse and an affair with a porn star that allegedly took place shortly after Melania gave birth to their son Barron. So it might be easier to assume that her refusal to attend these trials had more to do with maintaining a sense of dignity.

And yet, once again, her apparent aloofness and apparent lack of support were barely questioned by the media. It looks like the Trumps are getting a special dispensation in this.

Perhaps such child-glove treatment has always been the case for the wealthy.

After all, we don’t expect their home life to be the same as ours. The marriages of the rich, the jet set and the celebrated are different. Basically, they have more real estate and so they can of course – sometimes usefully – keep their distance from each other.

If there’s a First Lady who Melania seems to model herself after, it’s Jacqueline Kennedy, another beautiful, elusive woman whose marriage — at least when JFK was alive — was not easily discussed.

From the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the question of where Melania spends most of her time has never been fully answered.

In 2017, it took her nearly six months to move from her New York apartment to the White House — a surprising exception in the history of presidential domestic arrangements.

This was explained at the time as in favor of Barron, who was still in school in New York City — although the Trumps would hardly have been the first presidential couple to switch schools mid-year. Washington schools are thrilled to house a president’s children.

Melania, by the way, hasn’t shown up for her husband in any significant way on the 2024 campaign trail. Her appearance at this summer’s Republican National Convention (pictured) was minimal, to say the least.

In 2017, it took her almost six months to move from her New York apartment to the White House. This was explained at the time as in favor of Barron.

Even after Melania arrived in Washington, it was never clear exactly how much time she and Barron spent in the White House — or away with her parents, who had moved nearby.

Likewise, in the years since Trump’s presidency, Melania’s presence at Mar-a-Lago has often seemed more like an event than an everyday occurrence.

A Trump insider who regularly visits the former president at Mar-a-Lago recently told me that Melania seems to be treated more like a guest there.

And now that the prospect of a runoff in the White House for The Donald looms, Melania is said to be once again having her reservations about life in Washington. It is said that she feels it will be important for her to be close to her college-aged son, who is attending New York University.

Quietly, the Trump team would try out a new nomenclature: “part-time first lady.”

Does it matter? Should it matter? Do we have the right to know?

As far as his supporters are concerned, the image of the Trump marriage – that he is charismatic and virile enough to have a beautiful model, a quarter century younger, on his arm – is another part of the Trump mythology that they would rather to leave. undisturbed.