Former first lady Melania Trump apparently didn’t expect her husband to win the presidential election in 2016, according to Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, who was interviewed by Business Insider.

“Melania played a very limited role during the campaign, not believing Donald Trump would actually win,” Cohen said. “However, whenever directly asked for her opinion on a matter by Donald, she offered it readily.”

And Cohen is not alone in thinking this. Lots of other folks closely connected to Trump also weren’t expecting him to win on election night. His niece, Washington Post correspondent Mary Jordan, wrote in her 2020 book that Trump himself was actually shocked when he won. Journalist Michael Wolff reported in 2018 that Melania Trump cried on election night in 2016 after finding out her husband had won. The Trump White House subsequently denied this and it’s worth pointing out that Wolff has struggled with credibility issues regarding his books on Trump.

Former House Speaker John Boehner also speculated in 2018 that Trump promised Melania that he wouldn’t win, and therefore they wouldn’t have to leave New York for Washington. In the days running up to the election, The New York Post reported Melania and their son Barron Trump, would remain in New York until the school semester wrapped up. And according to Politico, mother and son departed New York for Washington in the middle of June 2017.

Trump insiders view the former first lady as one of Donald Trump’s most influential advisers, a position that’s rivaled only by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

But Insider has revealed something else that’s shocking, and frankly, rather sad. Melania apparently concurred with her husband that the late Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) wasn’t a war hero. That report comes from another of Trump’s advisers, Corey Lewandowski. McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for nearly six years. If that doesn’t make a person a war hero, I don’t know what does.

Trump doesn’t have a heroic bone in his body (especially not those bone spurs). Criticizing McCain was cruel and why Melania would even agree with him on this is beyond me. Fortunately, these two are no longer in the White House. They clearly never belonged there in the first place.