It seems pretty timely, with the level of hysteria America has seen on the Donald Trump Twitter feed over the last few days, that a new long-form article on Melania in the New York Times would include how the First Lady reacts when her husband goes off on his social media tirades.
The sort of Twitter fisticuffs that tend to recharge her husband’s batteries exhaust Mrs. Trump, who has political views different from her husband’s on some issues, one friend of the family said, and has at times been frustrated by his inability to compromise.”
Between rants about political foes, the investigations that envelop his entire presidency, complaints about black people “complaining,” and his newest obsession, using his office to exact revenge against those who have criticized him publicly, Donald is the antithesis of what Melania had hoped to frame as the ideal for online behavior when she rolled out her “Be Best” initiative.
In fact, the Times reports, Trump tried to talk her out of tackling the subject of online bullying at all, given his own penchant for high-level trolling. Melania refused to back down from the program until the policy director, Reagan Hedlund, jumped ship early in August in pursuit of government work she was more suited to.
There are critics who might say that the Times‘ coverage of Mrs. Trump is no different than their seemingly endless quest to talk to the “everyman” in small towns in the Midwest who still support Trump, despite having lost their livelihoods to his tariffs or having been fired from their jobs for exercising the “flexibility” of racial speech their fearless leader encourages them to use through his own examples.
But there is certainly a sense that Melania is at least trying to break away from the influence of her overbearing spouse.
The couple keeps separate bedrooms, and when they travel, they stay in different hotel suites. She makes fashion choices — such as the “pussy bow” dress she wore to a televised debate shortly after the release of the Access Hollywood tapes — that often quietly speak to her true feelings. Even the “I Don’t Really Care, Do U” jacket she wore as she visited detention camps for immigrants in Texas was interpreted one way by the President — that she meant the media — and differently by her own team, who insist she meant it as a rebuke to anyone who might question her visit.
She is, after all, an immigrant herself.
Featured image via screen capture
