Tag Archives: FLOTUS

national news

Melania must bear the burden of Donald

I am feeling mildly — but not totally — sorry for first lady Melania Trump.

She tweeted a message this weekend asking Americans to put forward a “random act of kindness.” Her intention was to call attention to Random Act of Kindness Day.

You would have thought she had just asked us all to eat our puppies for dinner. The Twitterverse exploded with recriminations against the first lady, but more notably as well against her husband, the president of the United States, Donald John Trump.

The tweets lambasted the president for his own bullying instincts and how he uses social media to insult, berate and condemn others.

It reminds me of when Mrs. Trump announced as her major goal as first lady would be to end cyber bullying. The response, as expected, was the same as this random act of kindness message. Many Americans — yours truly included — are appalled that Donald Trump uses Twitter to bully his opponents. We called on the first lady to look first toward her husband’s conduct.

Now she is facing this latest tempest.

I don’t feel totally sorry for Melania Trump. She was an adult when she married a twice-married man. She had to know what she was getting when she and Donald tied the knot. She surely knew about his behavior, his previous transgressions, his admitted philandering.

By virtue of her husband’s stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election, Melania Trump has assumed a role for which she might not have expected to assume.

Thus, I feel mildly sympathetic toward her as she seeks to convey a positive message.

If only her husband would follow his wife’s sound advice.

national news

Melania vs. Ivana adds to Trump chaos

This is unbelievable.

Ivana Trump once was married to Donald John Trump.

They divorced. Donald Trump then married Marla Maples.

Trump and Maples divorced. After that, Donald Trump married his current wife, Melania.

What, then, is Ivana Trump trying to do here? She’s sowing seeds of chaos by saying she has immediate access to the White House, that she’s the actual “first lady.”

You see, chaos follows the president in seemingly every aspect of his life, or so it seems.

As if it needs to be spelled out to Ivana Trump … she ain’t the first lady. She’s one of two former wives of the man who was elected president in 2016.

“This is unfortunately only attention-seeking and self-serving noise,” the first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement to Fox News.

Trump isn’t the first divorcee to be elected president. Ronald Reagan was married to actress Jane Wyman before he married Nancy Davis. If memory serves, I don’t recall Jane Wyman making ridiculous assertions regarding her status as it related to the president.

But, oh, this is a new day, with a new president, and apparently a new set of behavior standards.

The chaos, though, seems oddly familiar.

national news, political news

POTUS, FLOTUS and kids take time off

2015-04-15-1429074557-4314458-president_vacations

A young Amarillo businessman — a friend of mine — griped recently that the Obama family would be jetting off to Hawaii for a little Christmas R&R.

It’s a tradition the president and first lady have followed since they moved into the White House in January 2009.

My friend seems to think that since the president is the lamest of ducks — with less than a month to go before he leaves office — he doesn’t need a vacation.

Actually, he does.

This brings up a point I want to make about presidential vacations … which is that they don’t really take vacations the way I — or my young friend, for that matter — understand the meaning of the word.

Presidents are never off the clock. They are accompanied by that military officer who’s carrying “The Football,” aka the briefcase containing the nuclear codes; the president gets his daily national security briefing; he is on-call 24/7.

I wrote about the Obamas’ vacation in a blog post two years ago:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/12/vacation-for-first-family-potus-will-need-the-rest/

I don’t begrudge presidents from taking time away from the office.

You may choose to believe or disbelieve my next point, but I’ll make it nonetheless. I won’t begrudge the next president and his family from taking time away.

Donald Trump will need some time away — presuming, of course that he works as hard at being president as his predecessors have done. Despite what my friend asserted the other day, Obama has worked his tail off, as did Presidents Bush 43, Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt … I’ll stop there.

They all faced crises and conflict. They need time to chill, to collect their thoughts, to spend time with their spouses and kids.

They are not out of touch or out of reach.

So, with that I say to the current president and his beautiful family: Surf’s up, enjoy yourselves … but keep the phone nearby. We might need you, Mr. President, in a pinch.