You know, there are times I actually feel sorry for Melania Trump. (Sorry, brain freeze.) But seriously, what must it feel like to go from a station in life where Vogue was producing cover stories on your wedding and opulent, gold-plated lifestyle to high-fashion shade like this:
On her recent first major solo trip abroad to Africa, noted feminist hero and First Lady Melania Trump took a break from modeling colonialist fashion to speak with ABC News about her role and, interestingly, #MeToo.
If you’re cringing already, you should be: Melania Trump’s is not exactly the first voice that comes to mind when I think of people qualified to speak on #MeToo. After all, the woman has been married to both an alleged and admitted sexual assaulter for well over a decade now—a marriage in which she may very well have initially signed up to be primarily seen and not heard. (As a fellow former model, that statement isn’t nearly as shady as you might think—it’s an occupational skill some leverage into mutually beneficial marriages).
But here we are, in the Upside-Down, and the pussy-bow princess some call First Lady is being asked her uninformed opinion on any number of subjects—in this case, her thoughts on #MeToo following the Kavanaugh hearings.
Due to the time difference, we don’t know if Melania was watching the Kavanaugh hearing while living out her colonialist humanitarian fantasies in Africa. But in a “wide-ranging exclusive interview” with ABC journalist Tom Llamas, airing Friday at 10 p.m. EST, Mrs. Trump sounded as out of touch as she’s looked this past couple of weeks when asked about the #MeToo movement. In fact, her answer sounded skin-crawlingly like her husband’s “good people on both sides” comments, post-Charlottesville.
“I support the women and they need to be heard. We need to support them, and also men, not just women,” she said, echoing her husband’s sentiments at a rally last week.
“We need to have really hard evidence that, you know, that if you are accused of something, show the evidence,” she continued, adding when Llamas protested: “I do stand with women, but we need to show the evidence ... You cannot just say to somebody, ‘I was,’ you know, ‘sexually assaulted,’ or ‘You did something to me ... because sometimes the media goes too far.’”
Yes, Melania. Heightened awareness and activism around sexual assault is a huge problem, and it’s the media’s fault.
Fake news.
Mrs. Trump would not directly comment on whether she believes Dr. Ford’s testimony. But she did use her extended camera-op to bemoan organizations not wanting to work with her, blaming the Obama administration—and not her odious husband and his democracy-defying policies and rhetoric. But then again, according to Llamas, when not playing white savior on the savanna, Melania seems to reside in a hyperbaric chamber where even things her husband is well-documented as saying never happened.