Former first lady Melania Trump's memoir has risen to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list this week, Breitbart reported. The book, titled Melania, has caused controversy for conservatives and liberals alike as her husband, former President Donald Trump, is in the final days of his White House bid.
Melania Trump clinched the honor on Wednesday with just three weeks to go in her husband's campaign. While this is surely a good sign for Donald Trump's electoral prospects, it was an honor earned solely by Melania.
The former first lady gushed about her experience creating this bestseller. "Writing my memoir has been an amazing journey filled with emotional highs and lows," Melania Trump said.
"Each story shaped me into who I am today," she added. Melania Trump plans to release a special collectors' edition that includes never-before-seen photos.
Just one day before the New York Times announced Melania Trump's rise to the top spot, the paper published a scathing opinion piece about the memoir titled Two Opinion Columnists on Melania Trump’s Memoir. The pair of in-house opinion writers picked apart the former first lady's work.
Pamela Paul was the first to rip into Melania Trump. "I actually got a sense of who she is as a person, and I think that is an extremely superficial, politically disengaged human being, the last kind of person who you would think of as a political wife," Paul seethed.
The columnist went on to compare Melania Trump to a character from White Lotus to make a point about Melania Trump's supposed superficiality. "She is just really interested in nice cars and nice clothing," Paul said.
"You hear more about what she wore to every political event than you do about the event itself," she added. That's when fellow columnist Carlos Lozada chimed in, "I’m struck by how small her world is."
Paul then concluded that the book confirms their negative views about the former first lady and dashed hopes that Melania Trump was secretly a liberal. "I think that it obliterates those theories, and it shows Melania to be exactly what you expected her to be, which is a fashion model who is only nominally engaged with politics or with the world of her husband, Donald Trump."
Even as Melania Trump has clearly found her audience based on book sales, many conservatives were put off by an important passage in the book. Despite her husband's success in overturning Roe v. Wade abortion rights, Melania Trump insists that she is pro-abortion.
Earlier this month, Fox News reported that a preview of her book revealed the former first lady's decidedly liberal views on abortion. "It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government," Melania Trump wrote.
"Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes," she went on.
"Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life," Melania Trump insisted.
Regardless of what her critics have to say, Melania Trump has succeeded in producing a memoir compelling enough to be a bestseller. Better still, solid book sales could indicate excitement for another Trump presidency come November.