Melania Trump 2: She's Just As Bad As Her Husband

[SPHASH]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

I bet January can't come fast enough for her.

She doesn't want to do Christmas decorations again 

[AmazonGrace]

11 minutes ago, SPHASH said:

She doesn't want to do Christmas decorations again 

2020:

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

I bet January can't come fast enough for her.

Trump's fans are going to turn on her for not supporting Dear Leader.

[Alisamer]

Maybe she'll do all black for the decorations this year. Or skip them entirely. It might piss off a handful of his remaining base who claim to be Christian.

LOL kidding. The ones sticking with him would still find a way to justify it if he started painting pentagrams everywhere and publically praying to satan. 

[Cartmann99]

28 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

LOL kidding. The ones sticking with him would still find a way to justify it if he started painting pentagrams everywhere and publically praying to satan. 

He could hang jars containing aborted fetuses on the trees and they'd cheer.

[Gobsmacked]

39 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Trump's fans are going to turn on her for not supporting Dear Leader.

Mother pence can do the drecorations this year. They might even look ‘normal’!!

[Audrey2]

In retrospect, knowing how much Melania hated choosing the Christmas decorations, I wonder if all three years of Christmas decorations were her way of saying f u, or if she were just trolling to see if her hideous decorations would catch on.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Melania Trump, like America, may be more in love with President Trump than his critics would hope"

Quote

Bookies started taking bets on Election Day as gamblers considered a question on many people’s minds: Will Melania Trump dump her husband when he is no longer president?

Soon after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, Jimmy Kimmel even made a spoof of “The Bachelorette.” In it, a woman steps out of a limo to meet a roomful of nervous suitors. The camera pans from her stiletto heel, up her sparkly gown, to her familiar face — it’s Melania Trump! (Her head superimposed on the body of the actual bachelorette.)

Is Melania Trump really looking forward to being rid of President Trump as much as tens of millions of Americans are? Or is it just another fantasy that Trump critics are projecting on a first lady who has succeeded in shrouding her true self in mystery?

Many who despise Donald Trump imagine that his wife does, too. They point to a few videos of her seeming to refuse to hold her husband’s hand as proof. They also notice that Melania spends a lot of time apart from her husband, and she’s not as publicly affectionate with him as, for instance, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama or Jill Biden are with their husbands. Some have baselessly claimed that Melania has a body double who stands in for her when (they imagine) she refuses to make appearances at her husband’s side.

“Never, not with any previous first lady,” has there been a rampant conspiracy theory like that, said Myra Gutin, a professor of communication at Rider University in New Jersey and the author of “The President’s Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century.”

It’s easy to see where that idea came from. After a brutal election, many anti-Trumpers who are tired of the president calling others “losers” wouldn’t mind seeing him humiliated by his 24-years-younger wife leaving him, especially when he’s already down.

Melania Trump keeps a small inner circle, but two people close to her spoke to The Washington Post and said that she has shown no sign of leaving her husband, at least not any time soon. (They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they know Melania would not want them to speak to the press. “She believes her private life is no one’s business,” said one.)

The first lady has said several times over the past four years that she does not always agree with the president, but in the closing days of the 2020 campaign, she emerged as one of his most ardent cheerleaders. In forceful, highly partisan speeches, she slammed Biden, the Democrats and the news media, while urging people to vote for her husband, the one true leader and “optimist” in the race.

“I don’t think Melania leaves Donald. She’s very willingly complicit in his schemes and holds his beliefs as her own,” said Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney who is under home confinement while finishing out a felony federal sentence for tax fraud and campaign finance violations. “Those two deserve each other.”

The Trumps are remarkably in sync despite their personality differences, said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and aide who wrote a book that was highly critical of the first lady. “It’s part of the show. She’s always been the quiet. He’s been the loud. She’s been the soft. He’s been the hard. They play off one another. It’s part of the relationship that makes it work.”

Asked for comment on the fact that people were speculating about the possibility of the Trumps splitting up, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, offered a stern rebuke: “This question is pathetic and exactly why people no longer trust the mainstream media. No legitimate journalist would ask this.”

The idea that Melania can’t wait to ditch Donald might be a natural extension of the same wishful thinking that led people to assume that the president’s reckless disregard for truth and the norms of presidential behavior would lead to a huge repudiation at the polls. And although Trump lost reelection, that karmic wave never materialized.

Maybe Melania is similar to America: A big part of her admires Donald Trump, even if another part of her is appalled by him.

Melania Trump’s four years as first lady began with “Free Melania” memes and “Saturday Night Live” sketches depicting her as the princess trapped in Trump Tower, an unwilling political spouse when all she wanted was to be a mother to their teenage son, Barron, and spend time at the Mar-a-Lago spa. (In one SNL sketch, Melania is portrayed as gentle and lonely, if a bit naive, and starts confiding in a Pakistani customer service representative for Gucci online orders.)

SNL writer Julio Torres, the mastermind behind that and other Melania sketches, said he stopped wanting to write them after the first lady wore her infamous “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket on a trip to visit immigrant children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border — a message she has said was intended as a dig at her media critics, but which struck many as tone-deaf given her husband’s ruthless approach to families at the border.

“There was this shift. It wasn’t funny anymore,” Torres said in a 2019 interview. At first, Torres and his colleagues had felt somewhat sorry for Melania Trump. “We were like, ‘Oh, this poor lady. The American Dream gone bad,’ ” he said. “And then she started talking and it was like, ‘Oh, you’re not captive. You’re making choices. There is agency. You’re complicit. It’s not the princess in the castle anymore.’ ”

It’s been a trying year for a first lady who values her privacy. Late in the summer, Winston Wolkoff, the former friend and aide, released secret audio recordings in which Melania is heard expressing her views in an unguarded way.

On the tapes, Melania could be heard using strong language when referring to her White House decorating duties (“Who gives a f--- about Christmas stuff and decorations?”), and saying she delighted in “driving liberals crazy.” She also sounded heartless when talking about children at the border who had been separated from their parents. Those children had a bed in detention, she could be heard saying, and the United States took better care of them than Mexico did. The release of those tapes, along with other criticism, has contributed to a bunker mentality in the White House, with both Trumps feeling besieged. Some of those working in the White House attribute that solidarity to why they have appeared closer in 2020 than they did in 2016.

As her husband’s reelection effort entered the homestretch, she became more vocal in her support of the administration and its talking points.

In all, she gave four lengthy speeches in a whirlwind tour of battleground states, more than her 2016 campaign activities. In Huntersville, N.C., she referred to Biden as a “career politician” whose word could not be trusted: “You deserve a president with proven results, not a career politician with empty words and broken promises.” At a barn in West Bend, Wis., she slammed Biden as a “socialist,” attacked the press as “propaganda” and railed against the “sham impeachment.” It was strong stuff, especially for a first lady who rarely gives interviews and has often signaled that she has more measured political views than her husband.

“Joe Biden says he could do a better job leading our great nation,” she said as the crowd of 250 people in masks and wearing MAGA hats roared their approval. “Apparently when you hide in a basement, you feel safe communicating your wishful thinking.”

On Election Day, with the president in the D.C. area, the first lady walked to her polling place in Palm Beach, Fla. — without her husband, in a break with tradition — and cast her vote.

In the aftermath of Biden’s victory, President Trump has clung desperately to the idea that the courts might somehow overturn the results. Melania has made one public appearance since Election Day, appearing with the president at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day (and raising eyebrows by walking not with her husband, but arm-in-arm with a Marine and, again, not wearing a mask). She recently tweeted from her official @FLOTUS government account that, “Every legal — not illegal — vote should be counted.” She has not yet contacted Jill Biden to offer congratulations — unlike Michelle Obama, who had invited Melania Trump to the White House for tea by this time four years ago, despite bad blood between the families.

“As far as I know, the president has not conceded the race yet, so it sounds about right,” said Michael LaRosa, spokesman for Jill Biden, who is nevertheless building her transition team.

Grisham, Melania Trump’s chief of staff, suggested that the election results are not yet final. She said the first lady believes “we need to protect our democracy with complete transparency, and that is the focus at this time. ”

Many expect Trump to be the first outgoing president to skip the inauguration since Andrew Johnson did so 150 years ago, which means Melania Trump probably won’t be there, either.

“I think Melania will be under pressure not to do the typical things, like inviting Jill Biden to the White House for tea,” said Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.”

“Unfortunately,” said Brower, “we’ve descended into such partisanship that Trump has made that kind of civility that we’re used to during a transition period impossible.”

After the Trumps move out of the White House, Melania is expected to spend more time in Palm Beach, Fla., than New York City, which erupted with cheers and dancing in the streets at the news of Biden’s win.

President Trump, who during the campaign called New York a lawless “ghost town,” switched his official residence to Florida last year. Ultimately, Melania Trump will settle close to wherever Barron decides to attend high school, her friends have said. Some have suggested he might like to go to an overseas boarding school.

Last week, Dave Mason, an oddsmaker at BetOnline.ag, a popular offshore betting company, said most gamblers making a wager on the Trump marriage are putting their money on a divorce. In fact, so many people are betting on divorce that the potential payout has been shrinking. This week, a $10 bet on “Yes, she will divorce” before Nov. 3, 2021, would pay out $26 if it happens — down from $65 on Election Day.

“A lot of people want her to leave him as some kind of a payback, but I don’t see Melania Trump to be that type of a person,” said Elizabeth J. Natalle, an associate professor of communications at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who has written books about Jacqueline Kennedy and Michelle Obama.

“She’s consistently said in her interviews that she’s a big girl,” said Natalle. “She knows what she’s doing.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

I'm guessing the decor will be heavy on raised middle fingers, since she hates dealing with the Christmas decorations.

[Flossie]

18 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

The First Lady will not be in attendance. 

I've got a feeling that as soon as the election was over, she stopped giving any input at all into the Christmas decorating and some lowly underling took over from there.  They can't do any worse than the Red Christmas, can they?

[GreyhoundFan]

46 minutes ago, Flossie said:

I've got a feeling that as soon as the election was over, she stopped giving any input at all into the Christmas decorating and some lowly underling took over from there.  They can't do any worse than the Red Christmas, can they?

Most of the planning for the WH Christmas decorations starts very early in the year, often right after January 1st. So Melania's input probably stopped in the spring or early summer. The team would handle procurement and installation, so her involvement other than posing for pictures would have ended some time ago.  I could go the rest of my life without seeing her posing and squinting in pictures.

[onekidanddone]

19 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Well it can only be a vast improvement 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Everything we needed to know about Melania Trump is in those bewildering Christmas decorations"

Quote

It’s our final Christmas with Melania Trump, and we shall celebrate in the usual way: by accompanying FLOTUS on an annual tour of her White House decor, a one-minute video that also appears to serve as a trailer for a movie about a woman who wakes up in a castle one holiday season and goes searching for the person who spiked her eggnog with mushrooms.

And so here we are, following the first lady down colonnades and breezeways as she encounters rows of looming, florally festooned evergreens in the manner of someone who has never seen a tree.

The decor contains many roses, white lights and hanging ornaments — airplanes, speedboats — which Melania looks up at and beholds in wonder. There is a painting of a reindeer and another one of a fox; there is an ornament of an American flag and another one reading “Be Best,” referencing the first lady’s launch-failure of a signature initiative. There is a banner celebrating the 19th Amendment, which now comes across as fourth-dimensional trolling given that the majority of American women voters used their ballots to eject Melania’s husband from the White House.

Over the past four years Melania’s off-kilter Christmas decorations have become a reliable source of controversy. This began with her first holiday in 2017, when she unveiled a maze of icy, creepy branches that appeared to be a joint production created by the set decorator from “The Haunting of Hill House” and the Babadook. In 2018, she showcased giant blood-red trees onto which the Internet promptly Photoshopped white bonnets to turn them into extras from “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Last year’s decor, in a color palette of attractive creams, was considerably less terrifying, but it still contained the contradictory elements that have made each year perplexing.

Melania’s Christmas videos contain ornaments ostensibly made by children (extremely artistic children), but there is no evidence of actual children: no footage of visiting school groups, no sloppy handmade gingerbread, no festive soundtrack of recognizable child-friendly Christmas carols. The videos contain messages that the White House represents America’s “home,” but it’s depicted as the kind of a place where they give you a pair of slip-on hospital booties as soon as you walk in the door.

In a season meant to celebrate family, friends, community and warmth, Melania always appears alone and very, very cold.

The fans who love Melania’s Christmas decor — and they are legion, and they are loud — will insist they love it because it’s “elegant”; that Melania has returned “elegance” to the White House.

And maybe this is the disconnect: There are those who feel the White House should be a place of inclusion, a place where you hang up the weird calamari ornament just because Rhode Island made it, and Rhode Island is a part of the country, too. And there are those who feel the White House should be a symbolic showplace, whose inhabitants’ lives are untouched and unbothered by whatever is going on outside of its walls. Melania is not there to welcome you, she is there for you to admire her. When she delivers words, they will be stilted but she will look fantastic doing it.

But there were darker undercurrents to the Melania Christmas debate, too: the defenders of Melania have always insisted on comparing her to her predecessor, Michelle Obama, and it became hard to believe that “elegant” was a code word for anything other than “White.” Melania is “elegant” because she represented a very specific kind of White femininity: silent, lovely, delicately fingering the ornaments that her staff had assembled.

Surely, the pretense of elegance had fallen away by the time an audio recording was leaked in October. “Who gives a f--- about Christmas stuff and decoration?” the first lady complained to a confidante on the phone. “But I need to do it, right?”

The end of Donald Trump’s presidency means the end of a lot of things, but one I’m personally grateful for is that we can all finally stop reading (or writing) stories about Melania. We can stop speculating on whether she actually speaks five languages, or what she meant by “I really don’t care, do u?” We don’t have to read into her slappy hand movements, delivered when her husband reaches for her arm; we don’t have to hear about her alleged pre-nup negotiations or what bed she sleeps in or doesn’t.

In the end, the clearest sense of this woman’s personality that we were ever going to get was the version dispensed in minute-long clips at the beginning of every December.

Here was a woman, wandering through an empty mansion, selling us on a version of Christmas and America that you’d swear she didn’t understand herself.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thecut.com/amp/2020/11/melania-trumps-white-house-christmas-decorations-ranked.html

Quote

Melania Trump has unveiled her fourth and final set of White House Christmas decorations. This year’s come on the heels of a now-infamous leaked recording of her anti-Christmas rant, in which she was taped by her former assistant complaining about the holiday way back in July of 2018 (“I’m working my ass off on Christmas stuff … Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations?” she said, among other things.)

As we bid adieu to Melania and the cursed Christmas tableaus she has given us these past four years, here’s a look back at them all, ranked from the most to least haunted:

 

[AmazonGrace]

It strikes me as somewhat unwise to put so much glass so close to a tennis court.

[GreyhoundFan]

I agree with this person, if Michelle had done it, the MAGA news crowd would be screaming:

[47of74]

Malaria just wants to go home

Quote

In mid-November, as President Donald Trump railed against the election results, his wife, first lady Melania Trump publicly agreed with his sentiments. But privately, a handful of days after the final state tally, the first lady tasked an emissary with discreetly finding out what was available to her in terms of budget and staff allocation for post-White House life.

While the President is busy figuring out a way to stay in the White House, the first lady is determining what to put in storage, what goes to Trump's New York City digs, and what should be tagged for shipment to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. 

"She just wants to go home," said another source familiar with Melania Trump's state of mind. Asked how the first lady feels about rumors her husband might announce a 2024 bid, the source added: "That might not go over well." 

The first lady quietly brought on Marcia Lee Kelly to her scant East Wing staff in April as a special government employee who could add gravitas and experience. She is unpaid and serves in a volunteer capacity but her job as Trump's special adviser proved helpful as the waning months of her first-term tenure.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Aww she is focused on her legacy. How quaint.

Quote

The Obama china, planning for which began in 2011, was delivered in 2015, the color inspired by the blue waters off of Hawaii. There were 320-settings of 11 pieces each, costing more than $350,000. Laura Bush's china selection totaled 4,500 pieces and was also well into six-figures. (Bush ordered an additional, less-formal 75-place settings to use for entertaining in the private residence, which was not paid for by the White House Historical Association.)

This seems like an odd tradition.  So many sets of  expensive china that stand idle most of the time.

What are the odds that Trump will smash a set or two on his way out?

[fraurosena]

5 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

What are the odds that Trump will smash a set or two on his way out?

Knowing his propensity for temper tantrums, substantially less than the odds that he's smashed them already.

[GreyhoundFan]

What I found the most hilarious was:

Quote

Melania Trump has most commonly opted to borrow place settings from the official Clinton china set for her White House events, the two Trump-hosted state dinners included. There are 300-place settings of apropos ornate, shiny gold plates and dishware selected by Hillary Clinton when she was first lady.

Whether Trump's personal choice reflects the ostentatiousness of the Trump era, only the future will tell.

I'm guessing she has never told her scuzzy husband that he's eaten off the plates that Hillary chose personally.

[onekidanddone]

Melania Trump breaks children's hospital rules by taking her mask off to read to patients

There are most likely tiny children in that hospital on ventilators and this walking pile of sewage can’t keep a mask on long enough to read to sick children?

OneKid had surgery there on Friday and we spent the weekend with her. So glad we missed the shit show.

OneKid is okay. Recovering slowly. Her surgery, long planned was supposed to happen in August and kept getting postponed. I wasn’t thrilled that she had it while the pandemic is still happening. Her doctor didn’t want to put it off any longer and I trusted his judgment. 

As for Melanie, she can go give herself a colonoscopy 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by onekidanddone

[Audrey2]

Funny, I support 4 remote learning teachers, so I do zoom meetings in the conference room by myself with the door closed and put my mask on when I leave the room. I've subbed in a couple of second grade classrooms this year when there was no sub and I managed to teach a full day while wearing a mask. Our in person classroom teachers wear a mask all day.

Amateur!

[Howl]

On 11/8/2020 at 10:35 AM, AmazonGrace said:

I bet January can't come fast enough for her.

Prescient. 

I just saw some footage of Trump and Melania, perhaps walking to the helicopter to start the journey to Mar a Lago for Christmas.  They were holding hands.  Melania was relaxed an smiling. SMILING! 

The only other time I've seen her smile in four fucking years was when she was holding on to the arm of majorly handsome, buff soldier as she was being escorted somewhere during the inauguration ceremonies. 

She's spent four years in  the most privileged position in the world and she hated every minute of it. 

Fuck her, fuck all of these assholes. All of them.  Melania and I have something in common:  January 20 can't come soon enough. 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Howl