Melania Trump is showing as much class outside the White House as she did as first lady.
In the years of her husband’s presidency, Melania Trump stood up stoically in the face of national ridicule from the same institutions that fawned over her predecessor as first spouse. She never publicly flinched at vicious attacks on her and her family over her husband’s policies.
Now, with former President Donald Trump being assaulted on multiple legal fronts as he stands a real danger to Democrats of becoming president again, she’s putting on a master class in handling malicious mainstream media attention.
In a pair of Twitter posts Monday, Melania Trump’s office released a statement implicitly undermining “news” stories speculating on her feelings about her husband’s indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They also advised readers to “exercise caution and good judgment” in evaluating articles — particularly “when they fail to cite Mrs. Trump as a source of information.”
News organizations have made assumptions about the former First Lady’s stance on subjects that are personal, professional, and political over the past few weeks. In these articles, unnamed sources are cited to bolster the author’s claims.
— Office of Melania Trump (@OfficeofMelania) April 11, 2023
We ask readers to exercise caution and good judgment when determining whether or not stories concerning the former First Lady are accurate, particularly when they fail to cite Mrs. Trump as a source of information.
— Office of Melania Trump (@OfficeofMelania) April 11, 2023
In the media circus surrounding the sham indictment, that caveat about coverage that fails to “cite Mrs. Trump” would cover just about every word printed about the former first lady.
Do you trust stories that cite unnamed sources?
Yes: 1% (20 Votes)
No: 99% (2293 Votes)
People magazine, for instance, published a March 23 piece based on unnamed sources describing an “angry” Melania essentially cocooned at the Trump home in South Florida’s Mar-a-Lago Club — carrying out her social duties and concentrating on the welfare of her son, Barron Trump.
In the maelstrom of attention surrounding Donald Trump’s alleged sexual encounter with porn star Stormy Daniels, People reported, Melania Trump “wants to ignore it and hopes it will pass, but she doesn’t sympathize with Donald’s plight.”
Is any of it true? Some of it? None of it? The readers are left to trust People, that paragon of professionalism, without a shred of proof.
More recently, and more ludicrously, a New York Post Page Six columnist wrote that Melania Trump lives “in an ivory tower of denial” about her husband and cited Stephanie Winston Wolkoff as the source.
Wolkoff is described as a “former senior Vogue staffer who was Melania’s adviser until 2018.” The post said Wolkoff was also a confidant of Melania’s, but that the friendship ended “following a bitter dust-up” over payments for the Trump inauguration.
The Post didn’t mention that Wolkoff is also the backbiter who secretly recorded her phone conversations with Melania — then used them to write a book about their friendship called “Melania and Me” — and gave them to CNN’s Anderson Cooper to air on national television.
In other words, this waspish woman likely hasn’t been within backstabbing distance of either Trump in at least five years — but she’s surely in the know about the inner workings of the Trump household and marriage these days, right?
Not even the Trump family’s ugliest critics would believe that, if they had enough brains to read in the first place.
And from Melania Trump’s fans, the tweets got plenty of support:
“We know what they do. We’ve got your back,” wrote one.
We know what they do. We’ve got your back
— The Seidina (@seidinareed) April 11, 2023
“Ignore the haters,” wrote another.
Ignore the haters, Melania. Those that shine will always have opposition. WE LOVE YOU FLOTUS 24.
— Kat (@Kat77166023) April 11, 2023
“I love her so much,” wrote Tanya Tay Pesobiec, wife of social media firebrand Jack Posobiec.
I love her so much https://t.co/2CWujhBbpp
— Tanya Tay Posobiec (@realTanyaTay) April 11, 2023
Her husband chimed in with a sly dig at “journalists”:
Lady Melania knows how to properly treat journalists https://t.co/8gqDyU3rs6
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 11, 2023
“We are with you Melania,” wrote another, with a picture of Donald and Melania Trump decked out for their New Year’s Eve party in Mar-a-Lago. Melania sparkled in a sequined dress while a tuxedoed Donald flashed a thumb’s up.
We are with you Melania pic.twitter.com/xcFXub1yzd
— Tammie McDonald (@TammieMcDonal17) April 11, 2023
That kind of outpouring of support is a testament to the former first lady’s popularity — and there were many, many more tweets like the ones here (along with some ignorantly churlish ones that are inevitable where anything Trump is concerned).
This kind of support is also going to infuriate liberals, of course.
But the reality is, Melania Trump, like her husband, never got the credit she deserved from the establishment media for her time in the White House. But unlike her husband, she never gave liberals a political reason to attack her.
They attacked her viciously, and on a deeply personal level, simply because of who she was married to. (The fact that many of the couple’s most vicious critics, say, critics named Clinton, were actually guests at the Trumps’ 2005 wedding says a great deal about how dishonest and politically motivated the antipathy is.)
Melania never got sufficient credit for her anti-bullying campaign in the establishment, and her decorations for the White House (treated as second only to Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel when done by other first ladies) were mocked in the mainstream media.
Even her beautiful face and figure — undeniably gorgeous no matter what your politics — were banned from the same fashion magazines that swooned over her homely Democratic counterparts. (The decision to put Jill Biden on the cover of the same Vogue magazine that ignored a genuine fashion model in the White House gives “blindly” partisan a disturbing new turn.)
Through it all, Melania bore up with undeniable grace and civility — publicly at least. And public behavior — or behavior that becomes public — is all the public has a right to judge.
So it would be wise to listen to the warning from her office about poison pens writing about equally poisonous unnamed sources.
For four years as first lady, in the face of the most monstrous treatment, Melania Trump was a class act.
A healthy skepticism about “sources said” stories about her now would be a lesson worth learning.
