Melania Trump made a rare contribution to the campaign: she expressed solidarity in the face of the pandemic
The first lady of the United States, who does not usually speak in public, spoke of the lives that have been lost by the coronavirus on the second night of the Republican National Convention.
That was the message that the collaborators of Melania Trump, the first lady of the United States, emphasized prior to her speech Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention. Trump's speech from the newly renovated Rose Garden of the White House would be "authentic" and prepared without the help of professional speechwriters.
"Every word" of the speech, said Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump's chief of staff, "is hers."
It was a necessary rebuttal after the disastrous presentation of the first lady four years ago at the CNR in Cleveland, for which she discarded the speech prepared by two prominent conservative speechwriters and rather borrowed identical phrases and ideas from Michelle Obama's speech. at the 2008 Democratic convention.
But for a first lady who over the last four years has chosen more to be seen than heard and preferred that the one who speaks for her is her wardrobe (a jacket, the most infamous garment), a great speech in which she shares her ideas about the her husband's presidency was much more than a new opportunity.
The usually reserved first lady took the opportunity to acknowledge the lives that have been lost due to the coronavirus, just during a convention in which most of the speakers referred to the pandemic in the past tense and hardly mentioned the national figure of deaths. She and she tried to frame the Trump presidency in a moderate and empathetic light.
Melania Trump spoke directly to Americans who had lost a loved one and said "you are not alone." She recognized that "the invisible enemy swept over our beautiful country and shocked us all."
The tone of her intervention contrasted with her husband's insistence in defending his own handling of the government's response to the pandemic and blaming China and only mentioning the late deceased.
"It is what it is," President Donald Trump said in an interview this month when asked about the death toll, which surpassed 178,000 in the United States on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database.
Politically, the high profile of Trump's spouse at the convention could be a boost to the president from who, in theory, could help convince suburban voters but who has shown no inclination to participate in campaign events.
In a moderate tone Tuesday night, Melania Trump said she would not criticize Democrats. Rather, she said that she called on "the citizens of this country to take a moment, to stop, to look at things from all perspectives." She added: “I have also asked people to stop the violence and looting that is being done in the name of justice. And never to make assumptions based on a person's skin color ”.
She asked parents and teachers to watch out for symptoms of drug addiction. And she defended the president as "a real person who loves this country."
"Like it or not, you always know what he thinks," she said.
Campaign contributors have been eager to get more time from the first lady and finally convinced her in March to participate in fundraisers in Palm Beach and Beverly Hills, expensive gatherings that ended up being canceled due to the coronavirus.
But she remains reluctant about her involvement in politics. "We don't hear from her that often so that means when we hear her talk about her, people pay attention to what she has to say," said Anita McBride, who was former first lady Laura Bush's chief of staff. "Sometimes the message you hear is that of the quietest voice in the room."
Melania Trump deserves credit, she said McBride, for having "made herself understood without stinging the president's eye." For example, while her husband continued to promote an adverse message to masks, the first lady posted an image on Twitter in which she was wearing face masks and encouraged Americans to cover their faces and practice social distancing.
Melania Trump's speech may be her greatest contribution to her husband's campaign. She has made it clear, as first lady, that she is determined to do things her way or not. Trump has never naturally fitted the job: in 2016 he was usually annoyed at campaigning, and his main concern while in a public role has been the couple's teenage son, Barron, with whom he spent most of August, secluded at the president's private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
For her grand campaign concession - the speech - Trump considered using Seneca Falls, New York, the cradle of the national women's rights movement, as a backdrop. But he finally decided not to do it, because the logistics of carrying it out were too complicated.
His presentation at the White House represented the last border crossing between the governmental and the political in a convention full of them. He addressed a group of attendees sitting - but not socially distancing - in white folding chairs in the Rose Garden, whose renovation he recently oversaw.
In recent days she worked on her speech and rehearsed at the White House with help from Grisham, Kellyanne Conway, the president's adviser, and Emma Doyle, the deputy chief of staff for policy. The West Wing did not review her speech.
The message comes at a time of family turmoil among the Trumps, who have always sought to project the image of a close-knit tribe, and revelations from Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was one of the first lady's close confidants.
Mary L. Trump, the president's niece, recently published a memoir about her family that describes decades of family dysfunction and brutality. Mary Trump also released secretly recorded conversations with the president's sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, in which the president's sister says he is unprincipled and that she "cannot be trusted." Robert S. Trump, the president's younger brother, died this month and neither Maryanne Trump Barry nor her ex-wife Blaine Trump attended the funeral at the White House, an unusual event.
Meanwhile, Wolkoff is reported to have secretly recorded the first lady making disparaging remarks about her family members, including her stepdaughter Ivanka Trump, and these recordings are said to be in part the basis for her book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady (in Spanish: Melania y yo: rise and fall of my friendship with the first lady). The recordings are likely to be released to a news outlet before his book is published on Sept. 1, two people familiar with the plans said. Ivanka Trump is expected to speak at the convention Thursday night, when she will introduce her father.
Wolkoff declined to comment on the existence of the tapes.
One of the best known initiatives of the first lady in the White House, "Be Best" (Be better in Spanish), is an awareness campaign dedicated "to the children of this country and around the world", but it is not clear Clear political benchmarks to measure your success. On Tuesday night, Melania Trump said that if her husband is re-elected, she will continue "in the construction of Be Best and in working with the states to pass legislation that takes care of our most vulnerable."
Perhaps her greatest contribution to the presidency of her husband has been in international travel, where she has helped raise him on the world stage. While the president has spent part of the time of his trips abroad insulting the leaders who receive him, the first lady has been a courteous guest by his side, exercising fashion diplomacy by choosing designers from the countries he visits or garments that they nod to local practices and traditions.
His most famous misstep - when he chose an army green jacket that said on the back "I really don't care, do you?" On his way to visit a child detention center in Texas - has become a persistent element of his image. as first lady. Her collaborators say she has shrugged, just as she has other critics about the way she has chosen to play her role.
"As she has shown time and again, negative coverage of her does not affect her," Grisham said.
