Melania and Donald Trump's marriage appears to be disintegrating in real time - Toronto Star
Melania Trump is not the first lady. She is the first right of refusal to her husband’s bad ideas.
First lady Melania Trump at the United Nations General Assembly. “Melania is subversive, at least when it comes to contradicting her husband’s fixations,” writes Vinay Menon.
Vinay Menon is the Star’s pop culture columnist based in Toronto. Reach him via email: vmenon@thestar.ca
Melania Trump remains an enigma wrapped inside a Hermès riddle.
She should be one of the most powerful women in the world, behind only Ursula von der Leyen, Sanae Takaichi and Selena Gomez. But Melania’s cobalt eyes are forlorn. She looks like she bolts upright in bed at 2 a.m., alone in the dark, fighting the urge to call the ICE snitch line and get herself deported.
Melania is also subversive, at least when it comes to contradicting her husband’s fixations. She zigs when he zags. She condemned the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville. She lamented family separations at the border. She held a press conference to discuss Jeffrey Epstein at the precise moment her husband was hyperventilating and demanding the minions and bootlickers in the radioactive pothole that is Trump 2.0 make it all go away.
Just before midnight on Tuesday, probably as Natalie Harp was feeding him gummy worms, Trump rekindled his latest jeremiad. On Friday, he banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Then he showed up in New York for the UN General Assembly to find his arch nemesis.
As the Mad King with a severe capitalization disorder wrote on his Untruth Antisocial: “All of the SLEAZEBAGS, like Third Rate ‘Reporter,’ Kaitlan Collins, of Fake News CNN, a truly unhappy person, said they weren’t going to be covering me. Then why were they ranting and raving like Lunatics, in the Press Area, at the United Nations?”
To be fair, I was also curious about how Ms. Collins, an ace reporter, was able to get within spitting distance of the president after his unconstitutional restraining order. As it turns out, Melania let her in the front door. Melania granted press credentials to CNN and Politico after her husband banned the outlets.
This is like inviting the guy who fired your wife to her surprise birthday party.
Melania zigged. Melania made a silent statement with a lanyard.
By Tuesday night, I expected to see TMZ footage of Melania dining in Greenwich Village with Lawrence O’Donnell, Bruce Springsteen and Robert De Niro.
Melania is not the first lady. She is the first right of refusal to her husband’s bad ideas. She is the side-eye, the sarcastic whatever, the gossamer counterweight.
This is not to suggest she is secretly working with Hakeen Jeffries or plotting a coup from the ashes of her bulldozed East Wing. Melania cares about Melania. It’s more about human plate tectonics. We are witnessing a couple, two continents, drift apart on the world stage.
Agent Orange used his time at the UN on Tuesday to make unhinged threats, including spitballing the war crime of “annihilating” Iran and thereby killing 93 million people. Agent Red Carpet Terracotta used her voice to call upon world leaders to empower youth via a cotton candy speech titled, “Fostering the Future Together.”
Those last two words clearly do not characterize this marriage trajectory.
She wants AI to be a safe and regulated tool for young people. By contrast, Trump, who holds millions in AI stocks, wants no safeguards. Let ‘er rip. His only idea is rebranding. He ordered his government to replace the term “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”
Hey, President Dipstick. I don’t care if you call a bear a cuddle bunny if it is mauling me. You can rebrand botulism as pixie dust and nothing changes.
Melania long realized the MAGA gravy train was hurtling toward a catastrophic collision with reality. So she stepped off just before getting to Pennsylvania Avenue the second time. She sees her husband so infrequently she’d be unable to help a police sketch artist with a composite. Exterminators and gold leaf vendors visit the White House more than she does.
The end stage of a marriage can be measured in passive aggressive acts. A car door is slammed. The sighs start to register on a decibel metre. An important voicemail from your doctor is not relayed. Your hockey card collection is “accidentally” chucked into the blue bin.
Your wife opens the door so Kaitlan Collins can get inside the UN.
There is an irony is witnessing this slo-mo marital dissolution. Trump has spent his life bullying everyone into submission. Allies. Law firms. Contractors. Republicans. Media. But he can’t ban his wife from doing her own thing, especially when it runs counter to his fiats and edicts and tantrums.
If Trump restricted travel to Bali, Melania would buy a time-share in Canggu. If he outlawed denim, she’d join the board at Levi Strauss & Co. If he declared America now has only one season — Sumter! — she’d work with Amazon on a new doc titled, “Fall, winter, spring and fall forever.”
Melania Trump won’t let her husband hold her hand. He repulses her. So she is rebranding herself. She is going it alone and CNN can ride shotgun.
She is single without the messy inconvenience of divorce.
Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
Vinay Menon is the Star’s pop culture columnist based in Toronto. Reach him via email: vmenon@thestar.ca
