New report says West Wing is “frustrated” with Melania for contradicting Trump with messages of peace
It seems no matter what she does, First Lady Melania Trump just can’t win. While she has been barraged with public criticism for her fairly tepid response to the protests that have rocked the nation while her husband unleashes barely disguised racist vitriol and threats of violence towards the protesters, CNN is now reporting that President Trump and his staff are “frustrated” with the First’ Lady’s office for “contradicting” the president’s hostile messaging with her appeals for — checks notes — “peace, unity, and healing.”
For example, on Monday, while the President was busy calling America’s governors they looked like “jerks” for being “weak” for refusing to “put down” the protests, Melania was tweeting the following controversial statement:
Saddened to see our country & communities being damaged & vandalized. I ask everyone to protest in peace & focus on taking care of one another & healing our great nation.
— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) June 1, 2020
Brutal stuff.
It appears the West Wing believes the First Lady is using the timing of her tweets to publicly contradict her husband while leaving herself plausible deniability.
“There’s a feeling of deliberateness to her timing that makes it seem even more disjointed,” groused a West Wing official to CNN, who complained that Melania’s posts were out of sync with the President’s “LAW AND ORDER” message. Her tweets, they say “[don’t] help. It frustrates the West Wing.”
While we appreciate the gesture, there is so much more that First Lady Melania could and should be doing — but just like Trump, she has done nothing but tweet in response to the upheaval across the nation.
Perhaps she knows that taking any action to actually promote “peace, unity, and healing” would be met with anger from the husband she appears to despise, but that doesn’t absolve her of her responsibility to the American people and let her off the hook for wasting the platform that she has found herself upon.
Original reporting by Kate Bennet at CNN.
