Remember when Melania Trump and her fans liked to claim that she could speak at least five languages, including Italian in addition to English and her native Slovenian?
Melania Trump made those polyglot claims when she worked as a model in the early 2000s and then in a 2016 interview. During her husband’s first presidential campaign, she actually boasted to MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski that she spoke English, Italian, French, German, as well as Slovenian.
But Melania Trump’s proclaimed fluency in Italian was not on display when she visited Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2017, during Donald Trump’s first administration, according to accounts of the visit. She needed an interpreter when the pope spoke to her in Italian, asking if she fed her husband cake.
That visit must have been on Melania Trump’s mind Monday, when she stood beside her husband at the start of the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president paid tribute to the pontiff, who died earlier Monday morning at age 88, CBS News reported. Trump called Francis “a very good man who loved, loved the world, and he especially loved people that were having a hard time, and that’s good with me.”
The White House also posted photos of Donald and Melania Trump’s visit to the Vatican when they and his daughter Ivanka Trump enjoyed an audience with the pope — a rare privilege sought by hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world.
Ivanka Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and President Donald Trump stand with Pope Francis during a meeting, Wednesday, May 24, 2017, at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
But during the visit, Melania Trump mostly wore a grim face — along with a black dress and lace veil, in accordance with the dress code for a papal visit, according to media accounts at the time. She only broke into a brief — though uncertain smile — when the pontiff spoke to her directly.
And that’s when things got awkward, as described by the 2020 Melania Trump biography, “The Art of Her Deal.”
When Francis extended a hand to Melania Trump, she said in English, “Thank you. Nice to meet you,” according to author Mary Jordan, a Washington Post reporter.
The pope appeared to have been made aware that Melania Trump could supposedly speak Italian, said Jordan. He switched to that language and made a reference to the first lady’s Slovenian background, asking lightheartedly if she fed her husband potica, a traditional Slovenian pastry.
“She looked at him and said nothing,” Jordan wrote.
That’s when Francis motioned to his interpreter, who stepped forward and translated the pope’s words into English. Melania finally responded and laughed, “Potica, yes!”
When a papal aide handed Melania Trump a rosary for the pope to bless, she again replied in English, “Oh I would love it, thank you. Grazie,” she said. She threw in another Italian word when she replied in English to the pope’s question about her next stop. “I’m going to visit a hospital, for bambinos. Thank you so much.”
Pope Francis (R) meets with US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump during a private audience at the Vatican on May 24, 2017. US President Donald Trump met Pope Francis at the Vatican today in a keenly-anticipated first face-to-face encounter between two world leaders who have clashed repeatedly on several issues. (ALESSANDRA TARANTINO/AFP/Getty Images)
Jordan wrote that Melania Trump could have been too starstruck by Francis to try her Italian, or she didn’t want to be rude and shut Trump and stepdaughter Ivanka Trump out of her conversation with the pope. Or, Jordan wrote, maybe Melania Trump had taken a page out of Trump’s playbook: “Exaggerating if it builds the brand and polishes the image.”
The “narrative” of Melania Trump possessing extensive language skills fits with Trump’s desire to build her up as the new Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jordan said. After all, the cosmopolitan wife of President John F. Kennedy was able to converse in French with Pope John XXIII for 32 minutes when she visited the Vatican in 1962.
Unfortunately for Melania Trump, her supposed proficiency in Italian wasn’t on display at any other time during that trip. She was seen relying on interpreters or speaking in English during a G7 lunch and a a visit to France that summer. Videos of those visits also show the first lady using a few basic and universally known words such as “bonjour” and “ciao” when meeting European dignitaries or when visiting children in hospitals and schools.
While researching her book, Jordan said she could not independently confirm the extent of Melania Trump’s language abilities.
“I couldn’t find any videos showing her fluency in anything other than Slovenian and English,” Jordan wrote. “I asked the White House if they could point to any evidence, and they did not respond.”
Melania Trump was born Melania Knauss in Slovenia, a part of the former Yugoslavia, in 1970. She moved first to Milan in the early 1990s to pursue a modeling career and then came to the United States in 1996.
Jordan said she spoke to people who worked with the future first lady during her modeling days. During the early 1990s Melania Trump also worked in Vienna, where the main language is German. But modeling agent Wolfgang Schwarz told Jordan that Melania knew so little German that they spoke English together.
Jordan said she also spoke with photographers and others who worked with Melania Trump over the years. Some are native speakers of Italian, French, and German, but they said they never heard her use more than a few words in those languages.
During Trump’s first term, the White House biography of Melania Trump did not list fluency in multiple languages among her accomplishments, which otherwise include her being “a highly successful model” and launching her Be Best campaign to promote children’s well-being, Jordan wrote.
Melania Trump’s current White House biography also makes no mention of her speaking multiple languages. But it praises her for publishing a best-selling memoir and said she “consistently implements innovative approaches to advance her advocacy for children and the causes she supports, demonstrating a forward-thinking commitment to making a positive impact.
