TAKE GOOD CARE OF MY BABY

On June 12, 2015, Maya Angelou tweeted: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”  The press knew from the get-go that Donald Trump was a liar.  They chose to ignore that obvious fact during the presidential campaign because of the hidebound journalistic tradition that nominees of major political parties must be treated with respect.  If they found a flaw in one candidate, they felt obliged to point out a similar flaw in the other, even if there were enormous differences in scale.

Their steadfast dedication to the principle of bothsidesism poisoned their coverage of the campaign and allowed Donald Trump’s ignorance and bigotry to go largely unchallenged.  Well into the first year of Trump’s presidency, pundits kept expecting him to change.  They expected a “pivot” to conventional behavior, doggedly applied that label to anything he did, no matter how trivial or temporary, that looked like something a normal president would do.  If Trump give a semi-coherent speech, reading woodenly from a script someone else wrote, they declared that this was the day that Trump became president. 

They should have listened to Maya Angelou. 

Melania Trump has been trying to show us who she is at least since inauguration day.  The term that comes to mind is “hostage.” 

Word on the street is that Trump and Melania were planning to divorce shortly after the election.  To her dismay, Trump won, and she was stuck in a sham marriage.  She waited months to move into the White House.  She gave speeches plagiarized from Michelle Obama.  She looked absolutely miserable in public appearances. 

Yesterday, she wore a jacket with “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” on the back on a visit to one of her husband’s prison camps for refugee children in McAllen TX on Thursday.  Sometimes she puts on her brave face and assumes the role of First Lady, but for the most part, the past 18 months have been a cry for help.

The Trump administration has chosen to deploy Melania as a crisis actor.  Wingnut conservatives have fallen in love with that term.  Ann Coulter claims that refugee kids in Donald Trump’s gulag of cages were crisis actors.  The NRA claimed that high school students protesting gun violence were crisis actors.

But the real crisis actors in the public sphere are Melania and Ivanka.  Ivanka leaps into the breach, while Melania is probably shoved into the breach, every time one of Donald Trump’s inhumane policies generates too much negative publicity.  A gentle tweet, a brief site visit/photo op, and the conversation shifts away from the atrocity to speculation on how much influence his wife and daughter have on Trump.

I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for Melania.  No one could have predicted in 2005 that Trump would wind up in the White House, but she knew the kind of man she was marrying.  My position is that we should basically ignore her.  Even the I DON’T REALLY CARE jacket gaffe is a distraction from the real issue. 

The real issue is still kids in cages.