At the risk of seeming like a nutjob, my new Washington favorite person is First Lady Melania Trump. I noticed the same basic data points as everyone else last week - the Davos trip snub, the selfie trip to Florida, but Maureen Dowd of the New York Times really synthesized it for me in today's paper:
"Last weekend, on the anniversary of the inauguration, Melania Instagrammed a throwback picture of herself in her powder-blue Jackie suit, not with her husband but with a hunky Marine escort."
The Slovenian Sphinx, to use Dowd's FLOTUS nickname, is the first person in Trump's orbit who has mustered the guts to say, "Enough." to the President.
I never thought of Melania as much more than an underwear model who married up, until now. First of all, I've noticed when she visits schools, the kids love her. It seems genuine to me. Her early years were spent in a modest eastern European family setting, and that's why she probably knows where the kids are coming from.
The Jackie outfit she wore at the inauguration made me feel just slightly less terrified of the new President. I took that fashion queue as a sign of respect.
When I think back, Mrs. Trump has had some other big moments:
1/ "I'm not going to Davos. Maybe Stormy Daniels wants to go." That's how I imagine it went down.
2/ She visited The Holocaust Museum, solo. Who doesn't look like a champ doing that?! I'm not the only one thinking that was an acknowledgement that her husband is basically Archie Bunker. Dowd calls Trump a "retro-gressive" man.
3/ The hand swat in Israel. It doesn't get more real.
In 2016, I thought Ivanka would function kind of like a stand-in for a First Lady. I though that with Melania Trump there was just nothing there. I was wrong on both fronts. Have you seen the video of Ivanka talking to the astronauts on the International Space Station? Cold, impersonal, vapid. And that husband, tho'.
It's a year of women's empowerment stories. First Lady Melania Trump is running with the baton.
Here's the Times OpEd I've been referencing: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/opinion/sunday/melania-trump-florida-davos.html