First Lady Melania Trump’s air of indifference, as exemplified by her wearing a coat emblazoned with "I really don't care, do you?" during a trip to a migrant child detention center in 2018, is reportedly cracking as she now embraces her husband's confrontational style in public.
According to one Republican insider, that has always been her true nature, but the "shield" of studied nonchalance is slipping as she becomes more vocal about any criticism aimed her way.
At the same time that Vanity Fair’s Joy Press wrote about the “terrified” look in the first lady’s eyes when the attack on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, former GOP campaign advisor Steve Schmidt explained that Melania has had a change of heart about ignoring her critics publicly.
On his Substack he wrote, “Melania Trump’s audacity is truly next level. For years, there’s been a persistent myth about Melania Trump — that she’s somehow apart from the ugliness. That she’s above it. That she’s reluctant. That she’s trapped. This is nonsense.”
“Melania Trump has chosen to stand beside Donald Trump through years of escalating cruelty,” he noted. “She chose silence when migrants were caged. She’s chosen silence when political opponents are vilified and threatened. She’s chosen silence when journalists are called ‘enemies of the people.’ And when she speaks, it’s often in ways that reveal not distance from the cruelty, but alignment with it.”
Pointing to her new attack on ABC late-night attack on comedian Jimmy Kimmel, with the first lady writing on a social media post, “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate,” Schmidt stated that was a good example of how she now mirrors how her husband views the world.
“Criticism of them is unacceptable. Cruelty by them is excusable — sometimes even celebrated. Melania Trump has long cultivated an image of distance — an air of being above the fray. But distance without dissent isn’t virtue. It’s abdication,” Schmidt accused before elaborating, “If you stand next to power and say nothing as it abuses others, you aren’t neutral. You’re enabling. If you speak only when your own interests are touched — when your own pride is bruised — you reveal the truth behind the performance. This isn’t a story about a reluctant participant trapped in circumstances beyond her control. This is a story about choices.”
He added, “It’s another data point in a long and dangerous pattern: the normalization of punishing speech, the erosion of tolerance for dissent, the belief that power should be insulated from criticism…. There’s nothing elegant about that. There’s nothing admirable about that. There’s certainly nothing deserving of the myth that has been built around her. The truth is simpler, and far less flattering.”
“She has shown us who she is through silence, through symbols, and through words,” he concluded.