As first lady, Melania Trump always stood by her man
Melania Trump never found her voice as first lady. For four years, she could not distinguish herself as anything other than Donald Trump’s wife.
Like her husband, she didn’t care for White House traditions. She performed her duties, including decorating for Christmas, begrudgingly. She promoted her own initiative, “Be Best,” halfheartedly and ineffectively.
Prior to leaving the White House on Wednesday, she again broke protocol by refusing to meet with the incoming first lady. The unofficial obligation has long been considered a ritual of the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.
Melania Trump decided to stand by her man, as she always has.
She did not invite Jill Biden for tea and a tour of the White House living quarters as Michelle Obama did for her and as every outgoing first lady has done for decades.
Neither she nor Donald Trump will attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, signaling that it is not just her husband who thinks the election was stolen from him, but maybe she believes it too.
No one expected her to publicly criticize her husband’s controversial actions during his presidency. It is unlikely any first lady would go that far. But simply greeting the Bidens in the doorway of their new home would have been viewed as gracious.
She will leave town early with her husband, who is still sulking over his defeat.
So there will be no gifts exchanged, no well wishes or promise to be only a phone call away if the new first lady needs anything.
Melania and Donald Trump are one and the same. She has never pretended to be anything else.
“They say I’m complicit. I’m the same like him. I support him,” she said in a secretly recorded conversation in 2018 with a former friend and senior adviser.
In that conversation, she complained about decorating the White House for Christmas. She blamed Barack Obama for her husband’s policy of caging migrant children at the border, as if were taken from the script that Donald Trump wrote.
She never fully embraced her role as first lady. She seemed uncomfortable in the spotlight, where she would be judged on her own merits. However, she occasionally made superficial moves that suggested she understood the damage her husband had caused.
She was praised for her calming call for peace during last summer’s civil unrest and for acknowledging the nation’s flawed racial history. But her track record on race is contradictory.
During Obama’s presidential campaign in 2011, she helped her husband spread the birtherism lie that he was born in Kenya. She defended her husband’s racist accusation to talk show host Joy Behar.
“It’s not only Donald who wants to see it,” she said, referring to Obama’s birth certificate. “It’s American people who voted for him and who didn’t vote for him. They want to see that.”
The first lady said goodbye to America in a video posted Monday on Twitter. Her words were guarded and scripted. And as her husband is prone to do, she exaggerated her accomplishments as if no one knew the truth.
“In a few short years, I have raised awareness of how to keep children safe online,” she said. “We have made incredible progress on our nation’s drug epidemic and how it impacts the lives of newborns and families. And we have given a voice to our most vulnerable children in the foster care system.”
If anything, her husband taught children how to become better bullies. Other than mentioning it in a speech here or there, she can point to little, if anything, substantial that her “Be Best” campaign did to address the opioid crisis. And whatever she said to give voice to children in foster care, for the most part, went unheard.
After Americans have spent four years under an administration that promoted hatred and division, she asked us to be kind to each other, a courtesy the Trumps never extended.
“I ask every American to be an ambassador of ‘be best,’ to focus on what unites us, to rise above what divides us, to always choose love over hatred, peace over violence, and others before yourself.”
Most of us aren’t buying it. She is leaving the White House with the worst approval rating of any first lady in polling history.
According to a new CNN poll, 47% of people view the first lady unfavorably, compared with 42% who view her favorably. The remainder said they are unsure of their feelings about her.
Michelle Obama left with a 69% approval rating. Laura Bush left with 67% and Hillary Clinton had a 56% rating when she left the White House.
Melania Trump says that she is the same as her husband. So, if he is considered the worst president in modern history, then she is the worst first lady.
