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I want to be left alone




Trump being a showman, I would have thought he knew the best thing going for him was a mysterious Melania, but after a couple interviews the mystery is gone.  Now we just have your bargain store variety model doing lingerie ads for JC Penney.  The Greta Garbo act worked much better for her.

Not only is Melania not very bright, she isn't very sympathetic either.  She supports both her husband and his policies, which is odd given she is a relatively recent immigrant.  We were told that her infamous jacket was just her way at getting back at the press for bullying her so much.  In her most recent interview with Fox's resident bully boy, she went after the press again, largely because Sean baited her into it.

Melania feels the press is nothing more than a bunch of "opportunists who are using my name."  Needless to say, the irony was missed as it is pretty hard to consider her anymore than an opportunist who saw a good thing in Donald Trump and has been riding his name for 20 years.  It is safe to say none of us would have ever heard of Melania Knauss if it wasn't for a chance encounter at Manhattan's Kit Kat Club.  Not bad for a recent Slovenian immigrant, who had apparently overstayed her visa.  No worries, Trump soon took care of that.

Of course one wonders how much chance was involved.  One can easily imagine Russian oligarchs using her as bait to lure Trump further into their network.  Vladimir Putin wasn't yet President of Russia, but he was working in Yeltsin's administration and had been a KGB foreign service officer for 16 years.  Trump would definitely have been regarded as useful. 

Sean Hannity is not the only one who can dabble in conspiracy theories.  It has been fun to think of Melania as our little Ninotchka, but after these recent interviews, she has either mastered the "dumb blonde" act or is just plain dumb.  For someone who has been living in the US all this time, she still has a rather poor command of language and appears to have virtually no sense of  humor.  If she had, she would have made light of the contemptuous news media, and continued to cater to the fashion and entertainment journals, who give her mostly favorable press, except for her red Christmas trees which were almost universally panned.

Melania has never been one with a great fashion sense, hiring others to decorate the White House for the Holiday Season.  Whoops, I mean Christmas Season.  We probably can't even hold her responsible for the poor choice, as it was most likely her chief-of-staff, Lindsay Reynolds, who made the decision. 

Our first lady has rather limited responsibilities and what few she partakes in haven't worked out very well for her, like her "Be Best" campaign in regard to cyber bullying.  However, the utterly naive nature of this initiative befits her, as it indicates just how clueless she is of her husband's administration.  It's not just his noxious immigration policy that led to the separation and caging of children, as if they were stray dogs and cats; but that her husband has repeatedly asked Congress to cut domestic programs specifically aimed at children.  If you are looking for a bully, you need look no further than the Oval Office, but Melania chooses to make the media into the bully, just like her husband.

Since Melania likes to crib Michelle's speeches, she might have taken a few pages from her initiatives, like providing healthy school lunches, which Congress recently sought to undermine.  Melania could have worked out a few appearances with Jamie Oliver, who likes to take on the American school lunch program.  I don't think Michelle would have minded.

Her cyber-bullying campaign has gone nowhere, largely because it involves working with the media, particularly the social media, to counteract all the abuse taking place.  She has proven herself hopelessly inept in this regard.  She is unable to convey any warmth or spontaneity.  She is the proverbial cold fish.  Instead, she relies on carefully calibrated appearances to try to show that she is sympathetic to various causes, but then she wears a silly jacket that ruins what otherwise would have been a heroic visit to the US-Mexico border.

She took full credit for that jacket, which shows you how hopelessly out of touch she is with reality.  She thought by spinning it against the news media, she might gain some sympathy, which she did among Trump's self-proclaimed "Deplorables," but otherwise it was a total failure.

If Putin was using her, he has to be thoroughly disappointed, because she just isn't catching onto her role as First Lady.  Maybe this was the reason for that look of horror when she and Donald met the Russian President in Helsinki.  Unfortunately, Sean didn't choose to talk about that epic meeting.  Whatever the case, Melania is clearly out of her realm as First Lady and her approval ratings are slumping badly.

This is shaping up to be a rather bleak Christmas for the Trumps in Washington.  I'm sure they will take off for Palm Beach soon, so as to put all these worries and bad tidings behind them.  Maybe Melania will stay in Florida or go back to her lavish penthouse in Trump Tower, where she can be left alone.



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