Julia Ioffe is contributing writer at Politico Magazine.

In the hours before Melania Trump took the stage on the first night of the Republican National Convention, Republican women gathered in Cleveland—delegates, alternates, guests—weren’t sure what to expect. “I have no idea,” said Sarah Brown, an Ohio delegate. “She’s gorgeous and she has beautiful clothes and that’s all I can say!”

“I think we’re all very excited to get to know her,” said Sharon Hewitt, a state senator from Louisiana. “I don’t think she’s made very many campaign appearances, so we’re excited to see her and hear from her. It’s a big thing for Republican women.”


“She’s kind of a mystery,” said a delegate from North Carolina.

In a night stacked with Republican power players and up-and-comers—Tom Cotton, Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani, Joni Ernst—Melania was the indisputable highlight of the evening, blending the power of American celebrity with the magnetic appeal of personal closeness to Trump himself. Plus, there was an element of genuine mystery to the proceedings: Melania rarely speaks in public, and she had been missing from the campaign for an unusual two months.

Because she may be the next first lady, there was an element of national interest at play—which causes would Melania advocate?—and also a political challenge for her to face. She needed to seem relatable, a challenge for a Slovenian ex-model whose entire life in the U.S. had taken place in Manhattan dating, or married to, wealthy men.

The attendees, Monday night, were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t know that I can say she’s relatable,” said Hewitt. “She’s grown up in a very privileged family and lifestyle, so she’s probably not relatable. But I think that people, once they get to know her, will adopt her and love her.” She just needed to get up there and speak to them, the women of the GOP, about their values—family, country, the sanctity of life—and they would embrace her. “I look forward to hearing her so that I can relate to her,” said Michelle Brown, the guest of a Georgia delegate.

That desire came in part from their enthusiasm for Donald Trump, and in part from another source: their loathing for the current first lady. “Michelle had a lot of baggage,” said Faith Louis, a delegate from Omaha, Nebraska. Melania is "elegant, and after what’s been in the White House now it would be a nice change,” said Karen of North Carolina, who would give only her first name. “Michelle Obama is not elegant, no. She’s too outspoken. And she doesn’t like America. She and her husband don’t like America.”

Michelle Obama came up constantly and unprompted, this poorly dressed, inelegant, aggressive presence who would be neutralized by Melania’s “grace” and “poise” and “intelligence” on Pennsylvania Avenue. “She likes to entertain, so maybe the White House will go back to what it used to be,” said Louis, the delegate from Nebraska, adding knowingly, “I think Obama likes to travel more than he likes to be at home.”

When Melania emerged onstage after her husband’s messianic entry (“Is he a messiah?” actor Scott Baio had asked earlier that night. “No. He’s just a man”), there was a palpable tension in the audience, the kind of tension parents feel when watching a child at their second piano recital, hoping it won’t go the way of that first, disastrous recital.

Melania Trump’s speech was strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s

And she blew them all away. Her vintage-looking white dress highlighting her bronzed skin and her perfect and immobile chestnut locks, Melania was a vision of poise and style. She spoke calmly, confidently about her husband’s vanquished primary rivals, about her “elegant and hard-working mother” and her father who instilled in her “a passion for business and travel.” She talked about how they taught her that her word is her bond, that “the only limit to your achievement is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to reach them.” She talked about meeting Donald and becoming a U.S. citizen, “the greatest privilege on planet Earth.” She mentioned she “will use that wonderful privilege” of being first lady “to help people in our country who need it the most. ... So that every child can live in comfort and security with the best possible education.” She spoke of the kindness and intense loyalty of Donald Trump, of his dogged perseverance. “If you want someone to fight for you and your country, he’s your guy,” she purred, letting the crowd soak in each sentence as she tilted her chin toward her clavicle and gave them, and especially veteran and former presidential nominee Bob Dole, her sexy eyes.

The networks had gotten what they came for, and they ended their coverage right after Melania stopped, cutting off the final four speakers of the evening. The ladies present were thrilled at what they'd just heard.

“Awesome! It was just awesome!” trilled Glenda Pollard, a delegate from Louisiana. “I thought it was a home run and the dress was outstanding.”

“She did a great job,” said Emily Tennyson of Arkansas. “The way she spoke about her upbringing and where she came from to where she is now, it just speaks to our immigration debate how she worked so hard to do it the right way.”

The GOP ladies liked that she spoke about her family, that she was “focused on her child.” “She’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, she’s submissive to her husband,” Carol Thomas of East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, warbled. “She has a very anointed message for women.”

She’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, she’s submissive to her husband,” Carol Thomas of East Baton Rouge warbled. “She has a very anointed message for women.”

“She had to be seen in the light of a first lady and not just a beautiful woman who used to model,” said Mary Forrester, a North Carolina delegate. And though “none of us have known much about her,” Melania “passed the test with flying colors.”

They wanted to hear about her causes; she talked about her causes. “I like that she’s not trying to take on too much,” said Pollard, when I asked her which causes Melania planned to advocate for. “She’s already involved in children’s charities in New York,” said Forrester. “I can’t name them for you, but I know she’s been doing that.” A searching pause, a pleading look at her friend. “I know she’s been doing the Boys Club,” she offered gingerly. “That’s what comes to mind.”

She was mostly wowed by Melania’s business acumen and her success in her own right as a businesswoman. I asked her what businesses she ran. “Oh, I don’t know what they were, you can look them up, but I’m sure she did,” Forrester said. “I can tell them for you if you name them.”

In fact, Melania has one successful business: It was a line of affordable, Floridian bling that sold out very quickly on QVC. Her other business was a skin care line of creams infused with caviar. She once bragged that she slathered her son Barron in them nightly, but then the line floundered and flopped, which Melania blames on a derelict PR firm.

Regardless, it would be a stretch to call her a successful businesswoman. It is also a stretch to say, as many quick profiles of her say, that she is passionate about philanthropy. It is more accurate to say that once every couple of years, the Trumps host a gala and are named honorary chairs. More often, they are simply attendees. In March 2015, for instance, she hosted a gala for the American Red Cross. We know about this because she showed off, via Instagram, her hair and makeup before the event. She came from a poor, industrial town in Slovenia and married a billionaire, yet she hasn’t really given back to her birthplace. Shortly after the birth of her son in Manhattan, she, a billionaire’s wife, donated $25,000 to the town health clinic and didn’t even show up to celebrate the donation. She sent her parents instead.

Nor does she, as the Republican National Committee said in its biography of Melania Trump, which in turn was taken from her website, have a degree in design and architecture. While she did get into University of Ljubljana’s design and architecture program despite the notoriously rigorous tests, Melania dropped out after a year to move to Milan and pursue modeling. Her college boyfriend and high school best friend told me this, which was confirmed by officials at the University as well as by the fact that there is no thesis by Melanija Knavs (Melania’s birth name) anywhere in the registry, though all Slovenes who graduate write a thesis, and all of these theses are catalogued.

She was a successful model, but she was not, as Trump would want you to believe, a supermodel. In fact, when she moved to New York in 1996, she struggled to get jobs. It was only after she started dating Trump that her career really took off.

It’s not a coincidence that Trump supporters believe that Melania is educated, involved in charities, a supermodel and a shrewd businesswoman. They believe this because this is what Melania, in the rare instances she speaks, tells them about herself. She has learned from her husband the art of "truthful hyperbole": pushing off from the firm shores of truth about oneself into the endless, breathtaking ocean of what one wishes were true. It is an ocean that deepens with repetition, by the media, by Trump supporters and by the Trumps themselves, whose matrimonial hobby seems to be the near pathological exaggeration of their business successes, predilection for charity, and smarts. Their followers, who hear echoes of their thoughts in their hero’s vagueness, project themselves onto his wife’s familiar vagueness, too.

Going into Monday night’s speech, a woman from Georgia expressed her worry about Melania. “Probably, she has a hard time speaking,” she said. “It probably holds her back. Her husband is very vocal, and so she probably doesn’t need do that much talking.” The relief when Melania got through the speech with grace and barely a stumble was palpable. She was, as many Republican women told me, “very well-spoken.” Moreover, she had bragged that day to Matt Lauer that she needed to read it over only once before going onstage. “Because I wrote it,” she said, “with as little help as possible.”

Turns out that wasn’t quite true. Turns out, a large portion was lifted word for word from the 2008 Democratic National Convention speech of that women Republican ladies so love to loathe, Michelle Obama. The parts about how her parents taught her your word is your bond, and the only limit to your achievement is your own dreams? Michelle's parents taught her the same things, in the same words. Turns out, as the Trump campaign stated as the plagiarism grew into a scandal, that Melania dictated her experiences to “a team of writers.” Turns out, what she’s really good at is truthful hyperbole and that the women on the convention floor really, really wanted to believe her.