As with many denizens of Trumpland, it has been a torrential news week in the life of first lady Melania Trump. It began with finding out that her husband is maybe not as rich as he claims to be. Then there was the debate, where she was the only one of the Trump family who chose to wear a mask as they arrived. Things really kicked into gear for her in the last 24 hours. There was a leak of an intense phone call featuring her never-heard-publicly angry voice. Finally, early on Friday, a positive COVID-19 test. Both she and the president are experiencing mild symptoms and quarantining in the White House. Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his wife Jill wished them a speedy recovery.
News of the first couple’s diagnosis immediately overtook, well, all other news when it came overnight, including what was shaping up to be one of the most public displays of Melania’s private persona in her four years as first lady. On Thursday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper had Melania’s former adviser and inauguration czar Stephanie Winston Wolkoff on his show to discuss a phone call with Melania that Wolkoff had taped. It’s from July 2018. Before we get into it, here is a collection of words that may help evoke that month: immigration, ICE, Scott Pruitt resigns, Robert Mueller, indictments, palling around with Vladimir Putin, Michael Cohen’s secretly recorded phone call, Stormy Daniels, hoax this, hoax that, Paul Manafort trial, deadline for family reunification not met, not met at all. So that’s July 2018.
On the call, Melania expresses intense frustration that media made a big deal about her holiday decorations the previous November and not her trip to the border the month before on June 21. It was the time of the jacket, if you recall. She alludes to trying to get a kid reunited with their mom, but said she “didn’t have a chance” because they had to go through “the process and the through law.” The media, she says, is not being fair.
“Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations?” she asks Wolkoff rhetorically. “But I need to do it, right?”
It’s here that some observers would start to feel a little sorry for her for having to pay lip service to Christians, cultural Christians, and those who like to see the first lady doing what first ladies have done. It would be terrible to be trapped in a white-columned cage in which one is only acknowledged for the three Ds: decor, dinner parties, and deference to king Christmas. If memory serves, there was a whole 20th-century movement meant for saying goodbye to all that.
And if more recent memory serves, we’re all allowed to say “Merry Christmas” again because her husband won the “War on Christmas.” The decor had to reflect this mighty, mighty cultural victory. It was supposed to be a reminder that in this house we celebrate, and Melania, Trump’s wife and keeper of the home, was its steward. She had to do it, in her words, and she was supposed to revel in the work. It’s a big bummer cake any way you slice it.
But she managed to evade sympathy once again. In her next breath, as Wolkoff tries to get a word in edgewise, she goes in on immigration and the sorries come to a swift halt. She started hitting all the Fox News talking points. Kids were coached to say they were in danger, she said. The beds in the detention facilities are much better than the floors they were used to sleeping on; they love it there. She said that family separation was Barack Obama’s policy, which is in part true, though the policy wasn’t a blanket one at that time. Border Patrol separated children when they couldn’t confirm legal guardianship or suspected that the children were in peril. A judge eventually ordered the Trump administration to stop it and to reunite the families; the administration made flaccid gestures at compliance.
On the call, the fact that “they” won’t do a story about her trying to reunite a family is proof positive to her that the liberal media is against her; Fox would do it, she says, but who cares about that. Sure, it is interesting that the “they” wouldn’t do a story on her reuniting a single child separated from their family by the policy enforced indiscriminately under her husband’s regime. Why some outlets would pick up such stories and others would not is definitely interesting!
The first lady’s spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN in a statement, “Secretly taping the first lady and willfully breaking an NDA to publish a salacious book is a clear attempt at relevance. The timing of this continues to be suspect—as does this never-ending exercise in self-pity and narcissism.”