 "'The Adventures of Melania Trump' or why it's tough to be Donald Trump's wife")
Donald Trump is the lead star of his own reality show ‘The Donald Trump presidential campaign’ and his wife Melania Trump makes an appearance to boost this show whenever needed and not always for the right reasons. Actually, strike that. Never for the right reason. Melania Trump’s first run with controversy was when the Republican presidential nominee attacked Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi and posted this tweet:
"@Don_Vito_08: "A picture is worth a thousand words" @realDonaldTrump #LyingTed #NeverCruz @MELANIATRUMP pic.twitter.com/5bvVEwMVF8"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2016
What followed was Melania’s speech or should we say Michelle Obama’s speech at the Republican Convention in Cleveland. Melania’s speech, which was initially appreciated, matched the speech First Lady Michelle Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. Meredith McIver, an in-house Trump staff speechwriter, had apologised for the plagiarism in the first address by Melania and had said, “In working with Melania Trump on her recent First Lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wants to share with the American people.” Donald Trump merely termed it as an “innocent mistake.” The blatant plagiarism could not have been good for Trump’s campaign, but generated enough interest to keep Melania and Donald Trump in the news. Social media exploded with jokes on Melania’s intentional or unintentional faux pas. From being almost compared to Jackie Kennedy, she became an extension of her husband’s caricature.
Ok, this is pretty funny... 😂💀#FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/Mpe8wkytSL
— SIEFE (@Siefe) July 19, 2016
It was the best of times 😂
— Anand Madhvani (@dosima_org) July 19, 2016
it was the worst of times 😭
it was the age of wisdom
it was the age of foolishness…
👇#FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes
Impact Shorts
More ShortsMelania’s tryst with controversy took an ugly turn when New York Post slut-shamed her by putting her nude pictures taken during her modeling days on the cover. “You’ve never seen a potential First Lady like this,” New York Post said on its front page on Sunday below a nude photograph of Melania. The pictures, obtained exclusively by New York Post, were shot by French photographer Ale de Basseville. Slovenian-born Melania was then 25 years old and known by her professional moniker Melania K. She had then recently arrived in the city after doing modeling stints in Paris and Italy. Key adviser to Trump, Jason Miller had brushed aside the issue and said there was no problem with New York Post’s publication of the nude photograph of his wife on its Sunday cover. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Miller said, according to AP. Her nude photos unsurprisingly gave rise to ridicule, but she also received a lot of support, perhaps even sympathy, for it.
Hey, how about my fellow progressives and liberals stop slut shaming Melania Trump? Yeah, her husband is terrible. It's not justification.
— Joshua Guess (@JoshuaGuess) August 2, 2016
Emily Tamkin of Slate came out strongly against New York Post and wrote that though there are numerous stories on Melania Trump and what kind of First Lady she will make, putting her nude pictures on the Sunday cover is not one of them. “A woman should be able to agree to take naked photos for a European magazine in her twenties with the expectation that they will not show up on the cover of a newspaper/tabloid some 20 years later under the headline “Ogle Office” when her husband decides to run for president,” she wrote. Attacking Melania Trump for her nude photos, taken during her modeling days, exhibits misogyny and hypocrisy which screams that Donald Trump might still be a presidential candidate and get away by being racist, xenophobic, sexist and homophobic, while Melania will not be making a worthy first lady because she had dared to pose naked in front of the camera. There is, however, another side to this story. The photos were published after Donald Trump was severely criticised for his attacks on Khizr Khan and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim parents of a decorated American soldier killed in Iraq. In the Democratic convention speech delivered with his wife at his side, Khizr Khan showcased his son’s military service and criticised Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims from entering the United States, holding up a copy of the US Constitution and suggesting Trump read it. Since then, Trump has complained he was “viciously” attacked by the couple and suggested Ghazala Khan might not have been “allowed” to speak, implying her silence reflected restrictions placed on women by some traditional Muslims. AM Mitchell wrote on Huffington Post that the New York Post endorsed Trump, so why would it now attack him and his campaign. The author, “This is, as I have said, a crude red herring, and it is an open invitation for those of us who have decried and denounced Donald Trump’s blatant and consistent sexism to gleefully rip his wife to shreds until there is nothing left of her but our hypocrisy." Here are similar reactions which questioned Donald Trump’s motives behind the entire controversy:
New York Post just got Donald Trump into the White House! Publishing nude pictures of Melania Trump is a masterstroke.
— Shobhaa De (@DeShobhaa) August 2, 2016
Don't take the bait: "Trump is complicit in allowing a publication which has endorsed him to victimize his own wife" https://t.co/dyVFZeEoFL
— Richard Hine (@richardhine) August 1, 2016
At this stage, Donald Trump’s role or lack of it in the Melania Trump photo controversy is mere speculation. Whenever Melania has taken centrestage in his campaign, she has courted some kind of controversy and so far has not been able to project herself as a political spouse. It remains to be seen if Trump and his team could give a positive spin to the recent sexist attack on Melania. With inputs from agencies
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