Tag Archives: Melania Trump

Try to imagine any other first lady in this pose

High Plains Blogger has sought to refrain from posting pictures such as this one, but in this instance, I cannot resist.

The woman on the right is Melania Knauss, who would become known to the world as Melania Trump. It was published by the New York Post, a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, one of Ms. Knauss’s future husband’s better friends and political allies. See the Post article here.

I am trying to fathom the reaction if we were to see pictures of, say, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, the late Barbara Bush or the late Nancy Reagan in this kind of context.

We live in a new era, dear reader.

That’s all. I’m out.

Trying to imagine how the Trumps talk to each other

This blog post borders on the gossipy. But … I’ll post it anyway.

I cannot yet wrap my noodle around how Donald and Melania Trump spend their off hours together in the White House residence. I can imagine easily, for example, how preceding presidential couples might talk to each other at the dinner table at the end of the day.

Barack and Michelle Obama, George W. and Laura Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald and Betty Ford?

They all seemed so, um, normal. The men in those tandems — the presidents — all appeared to many Americans to be so very much like the rest of us. They all seemingly suffered the usual pains of compassion, or empathy over those who bear the burden of the decisions that come from the Oval Office.

I cannot yet figure out what drives the current president. I cannot yet grasp how he tells of his day to his wife. Or, for that matter, whether he even gives a crap about how the first lady’s day had gone.

Am I the only American who has trouble painting this picture in my mind’s eye?

‘Easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand’

Philip Rucker is a first-class reporter for The Washington Post. He posted a Twitter item that stated:

First Lady Melania Trump in speech tonight: “Kindness, compassion, and positivity are very important traits in life. It is far easier to say nothing than it is to speak words of kindness. It is easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand.”

I am blown away by part of what the first lady said.

“It is easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand.”

That’s what she said, according to Rucker. She is correct. Spot on. However, as with most matters involving the first lady, one must feel a bit of pain for her, given that she is married to someone who is too damn eager to “judge quickly” and is so very reluctant to “take time to understand.”

Illegal immigrants, anyone?

Consider what the president of the United States keeps saying about those who enter this country without the proper immigration documents. He is labeling them all with the same epithet. They’re criminals intent on doing serious harm to Americans, he keeps telling us.

The president refuses to “take time to understand” why they’re coming here. Refugees? Escaping crime? Fleeing persecution? In search of a better life for them and their families?

Who needs to “take time” to realize that not all illegal immigrants are motivated by evil intent? They aren’t all coming here for nefarious reasons.

The president is exhibiting a shameful prejudice toward all illegal immigrants and, by implication, almost all of those who come to this country.

If only the first lady’s wisdom could get through to her husband, who remains blind and deaf to the pleas of those who admonish him to cease the cruelty of his views toward immigrants.

It’s a lost cause. A president who makes public policy pronouncements via Twitter isn’t going to heed anyone’s advice. Not even his wife.

‘The Jacket’ shrouds first lady’s actual mission

I think I’ll paraphrase a message that appeared on the back of first lady Melania Trump’s jacket … so bear with me.

I really don’t care about what it said.

What I do care about is that the first lady chose to wear this particular jacket while she was heading toward South Texas to tour a migrant camp that houses children who had been taken from their parents. The message on the back of the jacket read: “I really don’t care. Do U?”

I also care about the decidedly mixed message from Donald J. Trump’s self-proclaimed “fine-tuned machine” that runs the executive branch of government. Melania Trump’s staff said the first lady never intended to deliver a message with the jacket. Then the president himself tweeted something that said, yep, she did intend to deliver a message, which was aimed at what he calls “fake news.”

Message or no message? Which is it?

How about we hear from the first lady herself?

I am acutely aware that nothing gets done spontaneously at this level of public appearance planning. These events almost always are tightly scripted affairs. So, when the first lady is seen boarding a plane en route to South Texas wearing a jacket that sends a troubling message about whether she cares about the kids, well, then we have a problem.

The message itself isn’t all that weird. It’s the context of the first lady of the United States deciding to wear it while preparing to represent the president at an event that has gripped the nation by its throat.

If it is true — and that’s an iffy prospect, at best — that, according to the president, the first lady’s visit to McAllen was “100 percent” her call, then we need to hear directly from her.

Was she sending a “message,” or was it just an astonishingly sloppy display of ignorance about how the “optics” would play?

Talk to us, Mme. First Lady.

Was there a message in the jacket? POTUS says ‘yes’

So-o-o-o-o. It turns out first lady Melania Trump was sending a message after all with that weird jacket she wore today.

That’s according to Donald J. Trump, who wrote via Twitter:

“I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” written on the back of Melania’s jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!

But … wait! Mrs. Trump’s staff said she wasn’t sending a message with the jacket. She was photographed with the “I REALLY DON’T CARE … ” message on the back while she boarded an airplane bound for South Texas; the first lady made a surprise visit to an immigrant center near McAllen.

Man, I hope she lost the jacket when she visited with those who are holed up in the Rio Grande Valley awaiting disposition of their case … not to mention getting reunited with their children who the president ordered taken from their parents.

As for the media message mentioned by Donald J. Trump’s tweet, something tells me he made it up — kind of like the way the president does with most statements that fly out of his pie hole … or flutter into cyberspace.

First ladies speak out; pay attention, Mr. POTUS

When do you recall this ever happening?

Five women who share a common bond have spoken out in virtual unison demanding that the presidential administration end a policy that has ignited a national firestorm over the way it treats families.

I say “virtual unison” because one of those women — first lady Melania Trump — finds herself in the most awkward of spots. Her husband, Donald John Trump, is responsible for enacting the policy of yanking children from their parents as they enter the United States.

Mrs. Trump has called on “both sides” to find a solution to the crisis. I’ll get back to her in a moment.

The four former first ladies — Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Rosalynn Carter — have spoken out separately, but are saying essentially the same thing: The policy must end!

Laura Bush calls the policy “immoral” and said it “breaks my heart” to see these children — many of them infants and toddlers — wrested from their parents’ custody and taken to virtual cages, where they are kept while immigration authorities sort out how to deal with their illegal entry into the United States.

As for the current first lady, I recognize that she is hamstrung by the fact that she’s married to the man at the center of all this madness.

I cannot know this as fact, but I only can imagine how the president might have reacted when he learned of the statement that came from his wife’s office about her desire to see this policy ended.

The “both sides” element of Melania Trump’s statement suggests to me that it disguises her actual belief that the policy is wrong on its face and it needs to change … immediately, if not sooner.

Sadly, the president isn’t inclined to heed anyone’s advice, let alone from his wife.

Signs of cracking among the ‘base’?

I am heartened to learn of some second thoughts among Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters regarding this ghastly policy of “no tolerance” along our southern border.

It’s the policy that allows U.S. Border Patrol and immigration agents to seize young children from their parents as they enter the United States illegally.

Trump blames a “Democrat bill,” which doesn’t exist, for the policy.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the Bible — as stated in Romans 13 — gives the Trump administration all the authority it needs to invoke this intensely cruel policy.

Now we hear from, say, the Rev. Franklin Graham, one of the president’s most ardent supporters. Graham has declared his opposition to the policy.

Oh, and then former first lady Laura Bush has weighed in with an op-ed column in which she declares the policy “immoral” and said it “breaks my heart” to learn of children being put in cages along our southern border.

The current first lady, Melania Trump, has waffled a bit, calling on “both sides” to cease this humanitarian crisis. I understand the first lady’s difficult spot. But “both sides” aren’t required.

Only one side is needed to fix it. That would be the president, who can end this hideous policy with a phone call and a signature.

Heartlessness on the border must end

Heartless public policy is an ugly thing to watch unfold.

Especially when it involves children, often young children … toddlers and infants.

Donald J. Trump actually said he hates the sight of children being taken from their parents at the nation’s southern border. Then the president blurted out yet another lie, that congressional Democrats are responsible for enacting a law that the administration is following.

Except that there is no law. What is unfolding in front of us is an administration directive under a “no-tolerance” immigration policy.

Now we hear that first lady Melania Trump has weighed in on this tragic event. As Politico reports: A spokeswoman for Melania Trump said Sunday that the first lady “hates to see children separated from their families” and hopes both parties can reach a solution. “She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart,” the statement said.

This is a heartless, callous and totally unnecessary policy. The administration enacted it to “deter” illegal immigrants from entering the country. It figures that undocumented immigrants will think twice or thrice about entering the United States if they face the prospect of their children being taken from them at the border.

But … seriously? Do we really want to be known around the world as the nation that separates children from their parents with no clear plan on when, where or how they will be reunited?

This isn’t the basis on which this country was founded. It isn’t the basis for the rest of the world pursuing the dream of hope, liberty and opportunity in the Land of the Free.

A nation that, in the words of the first lady, “governs with heart” can find a solution to this hideous public policy.

One way to start would be to persuade the president to stop lying while he blames this crisis on Democrats.

It’s not really our business, however …

Donald J. Trump’s lawyer of the moment, Rudy Giuliani, has decided to speak about the first lady’s view of one of her husband’s, um, episodes involving other women.

Giuliani said Melania Trump “believes” the president when he says he didn’t have a tryst with a pornographic film actress, Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, in a hotel room back in 2006.

So, how does the former New York City mayor come to that conclusion? Do you think he asked Mrs. Trump directly? Did he ask the president himself? Or is he just making a conclusion based on nothing at all?

None of this in reality is anyone’s business. However, since one of the principals involved in this idiocy happens to be the president of the United States, it sort of morphs itself into the public domain.

I have difficulty accepting that Mrs. Trump would even answer such a question, even if it comes from the man who’s now representing her husband in his myriad battles to fend off investigations of all sorts. They include this matter involving Clifford/Daniels … allegedly.

I still circle back to the one aspect of that tryst that makes it all so very believable. It’s the payment of 130 grand in real American money that another lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her quiet. One must ask: If there was no sexual encounter, why would he have to pay the hush money?

As for whether Giuliani is relying on Donald Trump’s assertion that his (third) wife believes his denials about a one-night stand with Daniels — sigh! — I only can fall back on the many lies Trump has told since he began his political career in 2015.

If it were me — and I am so glad that it isn’t — I wouldn’t believe a single word that flies out of the president’s mouth.

Twitter overuse brings this kind of embarrassment

Donald Trump’s incessant use, overuse — and some of us have suggested misuse — of Twitter as a vehicle for his public statements produces moments such as what happened today.

The president sought to tweet a statement welcoming his wife home from the hospital after she underwent kidney surgery.

Except that he misspelled her name, referring to the first lady as “Melanie,” not Melania.

As a former Texas governor once said so (in)famously: Oops.

The president — or someone on his staff — deleted the mistake. Trump then issued the proper welcome with the proper spelling of the first lady’s name.

I have stopped criticizing Trump’s use of Twitter to make policy pronouncements, although his use of the social medium to fire Cabinet officials and others in his administration is troublesome, to say the very least.

I don’t even know if Trump himself is actually tweeting these messages or if it is being done by some intern. Whoever it is, Americans deserve at the very least to have their head of state, head of government and commander in chief being able to spell the name of his wife.

Arrgghhh!