Featured Image Credit: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images/Matic Zorman/Getty Images
Topics: US News, Politics, Melania Trump, Crime
Bec Oakes
Topics: US News, Politics, Melania Trump, Crime
Police have launched an investigation after a bronze statue of First Lady Melania Trump was stolen for the second time.
The statue, which previously stood on a tree stump in a private field in her hometown of Sevnica, Slovenia, was chopped off at the ankles and taken on 13 May.
"The theft was reported on 13 May and immediately police officers visited the crime scene and launched an investigation," police spokesperson Alenka Drenik Rangus said in a statement.
Speaking of the theft, the statue's creator, American conceptual artist Brad Downey, said he was 'a bit sad that it’s gone.'
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Downey also speculated as to why the statue had been taken.
"My feeling is that it has something to do with the new election [of Donald Trump], but who knows, right?" he told AFP.
The bronze statue was erected in September 2020 to replace a previous wooden depiction of Melania that arsonists had destroyed.
The original, which depicted the first lady in her blue inauguration dress, had been set alight on 4 July of that year.
Both the wooden and bronze items were a collaboration between Downey and local artist Aleš Župevc.
Downey denies having anything to do with the 2020 arson attack.
"I neither set fire to the statue, nor did I commission anyone to do so," he said at the time and told German magazine Monopol that the new structure had to be 'as solid as possible, out of a durable material which cannot be wantonly destroyed.'
As for the real Melania Trump, people have recently been speculating about her whereabouts after it was reported she'd spent less than 14 days in the White House since her husband returned to office in January.
One journalist has a bombshell theory over why the first lady, like her bronze statue, has seemingly vanished.
Journalist and biographer Michael Wolff said on The Daily Beast Podcast: "They clearly do not in any way inhabit a marriage as we define marriage.
"I think maybe we can more specifically say they live separate lives. They are separated. The president of the United States and the first lady are separated.
"The American public has been sold a bill of goods here that, you know, Donald Trump and his glamorous wife. That runs entirely counter to all of the facts here, including the fact that they don’t spend any time together."
But, in response to previous reports about Melania's lack of presence at the White House, officials said that she is there a lot more often than the public is aware of.