It’s been a low-grade but durable grievance of MAGA over the last decade: Why does Melania Trump, despite her long history as a fashion model, not ever get featured on the cover of fashion magazines?
NBC News wrote about this in 2018.
“For some people, it’s a moral issue,” one anonymous magazine editor told NBC. “There is no way to do the Trumps without infuriating either the base or the resistance. It is a no-win.”
Actor James Woods complained about the same thing, also in 2018, while using a photo of Melania that appeared at the time to be several years old.
If the Trumps were Democrats, Melania would be on every cover of every chic women’s magazine in the world every month. pic.twitter.com/yLDSkfKufT
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 7, 2018
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Melania herself raised the issue in 2022, in her first post-White House interview with Fox News, in which the interviewer happened to be future Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“They are biased, and they have likes and dislikes, and it’s so obvious,” Melania said at the time of Vogue, “And I think American people and everyone see it, and I have much more important things to do — and I did in the White House — than being on the cover of Vogue.” The Daily Beast reported at the time that Vogue had approached Melania about a photo shoot, but she had turned them down when they didn’t promise a cover.
Earlier this year, longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour was ripped by Megyn Kelly for the lack of Melania covers.
Melania Trump opted for a tuxedo for her black-and-white boardroom pastiche. https://t.co/Yb9Q5y95bF
— Vogue Runway (@VogueRunway) January 28, 2025
At any rate, Vogue has weighed in- not with a cover shoot, but rather a critique of the first lady’s official portrait.
‘Trump looked more like she was guest starring on an episode of The Apprentice than assuming the role of first lady of the United States,” the magazine’s Hannah Jackson said of the portrait.
“Trump’s clothing certainly didn’t help the boardroom pastiche. The first lady wore a black Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo jacket with satin-trimmed lapels over a white button-up, which she paired with a Ralph Lauren cummerbund and trousers. The choice to wear a tuxedo—as opposed to a blazer or blouse—made Trump look more like a freelance magician than a public servant. It’s perhaps unsurprising that a woman who lived in a gold-encrusted penthouse, whose fame is so intertwined with a reality-television empire, would refuse to abandon theatrics—even when faced with 248 years of tradition.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
