Melania Trump, Silent for Months, Re-emerges in a Series of Cryptic Videos

What’s up with Melania?

This perennial question is being asked now that the former first lady, who has stayed almost entirely out of sight as her husband campaigns for the White House, has begun to re-emerge.

Melania Trump has a memoir coming out on Oct. 8. It’s called “Melania.” She has been releasing short-form videos of herself talking into the camera, which her husband, former President Donald J. Trump, has been reposting to his own social media feeds.

True to Mrs. Trump’s sphinx-like style, her videos are somewhat cryptic.

In one posted on Tuesday, she appears before a shadowy backdrop, dressed all in black, to muse conspiratorially about the attempt on her husband’s life. “The silence around it feels heavy,” she says while a jangly, anxious tune that sounds like something out of an Alan Pakula film plays in the background. “I can’t help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story, and we need to uncover the truth.”

Will the “truth” be uncovered at melaniatrump.com, to which she links? Pre-order to find out ($250 for the collector’s edition, which includes a “digital collectible”).

In another video, posted on Sunday, Mrs. Trump narrates while white text crawls across a black background: “It has become increasingly apparent that there are significant challenges to free speech, as demonstrated by the efforts to silence my husband.”

The mysterious videos about mysterious forces are the most the public has heard from the mysterious former first lady in a long while. She was not by Mr. Trump’s side at his recent trial in Manhattan (maybe because it revolved around hush money paid to a porn star). She did appear at two fund-raisers this year, at Mar-a-Lago and at Trump Tower, both with gay Republicans — there were some photos in The Daily Mail — but there has been little beyond that.

Mr. Trump’s allies and other members of his family keep insisting that Mrs. Trump is totally on board with the effort to re-elect her husband. But at their party’s convention in Milwaukee, many Republicans were befuddled as to where she was, if she planned to show up or even if she would return to the White House were Mr. Trump to win another term.

Her absence throughout that week raised eyebrows not only because conventions are typically built with a prime speaking slot for the candidate’s spouse in mind, but also because Mr. Trump had been shot at days earlier. Mrs. Trump put out a letter after that happened, but she did not rush to Milwaukee to be with him. (Contrast that with Nancy Reagan, who raced to the emergency room after President Reagan was shot in 1981, and spent the next 13 days by his side.)

Mrs. Trump did finally show up on the final night of the convention, rocking red Dior, though she did not speak.

But now she has something to say — and something to sell. “Writing this memoir has been a deeply personal and reflective journey for me,” she said in another promo clip posted last week. But just how personal will she get? A description of the book promises “an intimate portrait of a woman who has lived an extraordinary life.”

“As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation,” Mrs. Trump says in one video, “I feel a responsibility to clarify the facts.”