The GOP’s presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has promised to "close the border" on his first day in office if he returns to the White House in January 2025. Many of the former president's critics have slammed him as anti-immigrant, but defenders have pointed out that two of Trump's three wives have been immigrants from Eastern Europe.
The late Ivana Trump, his first wife, was born in what is now the Czech Republic and was once communist Czechoslovakia; former First Lady Melania Trump is from Slovenia, which used to be part of the former Yugoslavia. Trump's second wife, Marla Maples, however, was from Cohutta, Georgia — roughly 110 miles from Atlanta.
On Friday Melania Trump was a guest speaker at a naturalization ceremony for new U.S. citizens — held in the rotunda at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C.
According to Politico's Michael Schaffer, Donald Trump's campaign could use her speech to argue that he isn't anti-immigrant.
"It wouldn't be the first time the Trump political operation has used a citizenship ceremony to his advantage, a chance to soften his image with voters who might see bigotry in his rhetoric about Mexican rapists, or even his more prosaic calls for reducing legal immigration," Schaffer explains.
"During the 2020 Republican National Convention, the then-president stood alongside his acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, during a naturalization swearing-in at the White House."
Schaffer finds it ironic that Melania Trump was scheduled to speak at the National Archives, as one of the four criminal indictments that her husband is facing has to do with White House documents that the Archives chased after "for two years."
The Politico reporter adds, "They say Trump was invited in her capacity as a former first lady, not as a candidate's spouse."
A National Archives spokesperson told Politico, "Naturalization ceremonies at the National Archives are not political events, and speakers are not invited in a political capacity."
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Politico's full report is available at this link.
