When Donald Trump was photographed entering his Trump Tower skyscraper on Monday evening in New York and then emerging again on Tuesday to face criminal charges in a Manhattan court, in a historic low for a former US president, he cut a solitary figure.
And as he flew back on his private jet to Florida after pleading not guilty to 34 charges accusing him of covering up hush-money payments to an adult film star and an ex-Playboy model while he was married, the woman to whom he was then (and is now) married, Melania Trump, was not there.