Who is Mira Ricardel and why has Melania Trump called for the senior White House aide to be sacked?

President's wife and deputy national security adviser at odds on tour to Africa

US first lady Melania Trump (Vincent Kessler/Reuters)

The office of the US first lady, Melania Trump, has taken the unprecedented step of calling for the firing of a member of her husband Donald Trump's senior staff.

Ms Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, issued an extraordinary statement urging the removal of Mira Ricardel, the president’s deputy national security adviser, from her role.

“It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honour of serving in this White House,” Ms Grisham said.

While sudden firings are a common occurrence within the Trump administration – with the president often accused of running the West Wing like an extended episode of his NBC reality show The Apprentice – the development poses an interesting question about the exact remit of the first lady’s authority.

1. Who is Mira Ricardel?

   The subject of Ms Trump’s ire is a former Boeing vice president who worked on the Trump presidential transition team as an adviser to the Department of Defence.

   Before being picked by new national security adviser John Bolton to serve as his deputy in April this year, Ms Ricardel was the White House’s under secretary of commerce for export administration.

   

   White House deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel (Jonathan Erst/Reuters)

   Born and raised in Pasadena, California, she is the daughter of Bosnian immigrants, her father Petar Radielovic arriving in the US in 1956 after spending his youth among the Ustasha, a Croatian fascist movement active in Yugoslavia during the Second World War. He was a survivor of the Bleiburg massacre of May 1945, in which thousands of fleeing Axis soldiers were put to death or imprisoned in labour camps.

   Graduating in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in 1982, Ms Ricardel considered herself a “Reagan Republican” and initially worked in arms control for the State Department before serving as a legislative assistant to Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, proving herself invaluable to him by providing background on the Bosnian War raging between 1992 and 1995.

   Following a period as a consultant, she joined the George W Bush government serving under Donald Rumsfeld as assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs and developed a foreign policy speciality in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia.

   After a decade in the private sector with Boeing, she joined the Trump campaign, quickly falling out with the likes of chief of staff John Kelly and defence secretary Jim Mattis over their favouring more moderate Republican appointments to the Pentagon when she preferred hard-line party loyalists.

   Mr Bolton and Ms Ricardel were thought to be in favour of ousting Mr Mattis, whom they do not consider to be appropriately ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration.

2. Why has Melania Trump taken exception to her?

   Only in her current role for seven months, Ms Ricardel has developed a reputation for obstinacy and aggression towards aides and has been accused of plotting against her enemies by leaking unfavourable information to the press.

   Her spat with Melania Trump is said to date from the first lady’s diplomatic tour of Africa in October, which “didn’t go well”, according to one AP source.

   Ms Trump reportedly fell out with Ms Ricardel over seating arrangements on the flight out and over the latter’s withholding of National Security Council funds for the trip, a mission on which the first lady was roundly mocked for her decision to sport what looked like a colonial-era pith helmet and safari khakis in Kenya.

   On returning to Washington, Ms Trump is thought to have complained to her husband about her treatment by Ms Ricardel and urged him to remove her from her post, no great stretch for a president all too happy to swing the axe.

   John Bolton, away in Singapore, was not around to argue the case on behalf of his ally.

3. Does the first lady have a say in White House appointments?

   While first ladies have been known historically to pressure their husbands over official business behind the scenes, doing so via a public statement of this kind has never been done before.

   Michelle Obama is understood to have had a tense relationship with her husband’s first press secretary Robert Gibbs while George Stephanopolous recounted his run-ins with Hillary Clinton when Bill was in the Oval Office in his memoir. In the 1980s, Capitol Hill gossip often concerned feuds between Nancy Reagan and chief of staff Don Regan.

   Ultimately, the responsibilities of a first lady are only loosely defined and how the current incumbent enacts the role depends very much on their personality.

   Dolley Madison, wife of the fourth president James Madison, is credited with setting the template for first ladies to follow in the early 19th century by furnishing the White House, working to help orphans and women and attracting press interest due to her modish manner of dress. She was given an honorary seat on the floor of Congress and her popularity contributed enormously to her husband’s appeal.

   Her example set the standard for others to follow until Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the position between 1933 and 1945 on the strength of her outspoken character.

   Ahead of her time in attitudes to race and gender, Eleanor Roosevelt held regular press conferences, wrote newspaper and magazine columns, hosted a radio show, spoke at party conventions and was never afraid to publicly disagree with her husband’s policy agenda.

   As first lady, Melania Trump has largely cut a reserved figure, typically staying away from the limelight other than when promoting her anti-bullying agenda.

   Her previous brush with major controversy came in June when she chose to wear a green army coat with “I really don’t care, do u?” painted on the back while visiting a migrant detention centre in Texas. President Trump explained on Twitter the offending jacket was intended as a rejection of “the Fake News Media”.

   Clearly a strong character capable of making her voice heard, Ms Trump’s previous aversion to public drama suggests her dislike of Ms Ricardel must have been intense, given that she was willing to endure the scrutiny that comes with such a proclamation to see an enemy removed from office.