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Two Opinion Columnists on Melania Trump’s Memoir
Pamela Paul and Carlos Lozada dig into the former first lady’s “book-adjacent object.”
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Two Opinion Columnists on Melania Trump’s Memoir
Pamela Paul and Carlos Lozada dig into the former first lady’s “book-adjacent object.”
Melania Trump promoted her recent memoir, “Melania,” with a series of glossy and cryptic promotional videos stating the desire “to share my perspective: the truth.” But what does the self-titled memoir reveal to us about the often inscrutable former first lady? The bookish Opinion columnists Carlos Lozada and Pamela Paul discuss what they learned — and often, what they did not — from her work.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of the audio piece. To listen to this piece, click the play button above.
Carlos Lozada: Hi, I’m Carlos Lozada. I’m a New York Times Opinion columnist and co-host of the “Matter of Opinion” podcast. I am delighted to be joined by my friend and fellow columnist Pamela Paul.
Pamela Paul: Hey, Carlos.
Lozada: Good to see you, Pamela.
Paul: Good to be here.
Lozada: Pamela and I often just sit around and talk about books. So that’s what we’re going to do today. In a prior life, I was a book critic at The Washington Post. Pamela used to run The New York Times Book Review. So this is kind of the thing that we enjoy doing. And we both just read Melania Trump’s new memoir.
Advertisement: “Writing this memoir has been a deeply personal and reflective journey for me.”
It is just titled “Melania.”
Advertisement: “I believe it is important to share my perspective: the truth.”
And it’s this all-black dust jacket, just one word — Melania — in white and just one blurb on the back from, you guessed it, Donald Trump. It’s a pretty conventional memoir, in terms of what it covers. It’s Melania Trump’s childhood, her modeling career, her move to New York, her marriage to Donald Trump and then a somewhat selective reading of her experiences as a political wife, as the first lady and watching Donald Trump’s career.
