Hubby snub stirs buzz on state of union
Netanyahu met a group of young Jewish and Arab patients while touring Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Organization. The children, some wearing hospital pajamas, sat around a table and presented the women with pictures they had drawn.
The First Lady also handed out White House backpacks stuffed with puzzles, games and toys. The hospital dedicated a bench bearing both women’s names in honor of their visit.
She also at one point voluntarily grabbed Trump’s finger — wrapping two of her own around his — as they headed back to his helicopter, a gesture also caught by the cameras.
It’s not the first time Melania Trump, 47, has displayed some discomfort with the demands and expectations of being First Lady.
At times she seems more aware of social niceties than her husband, like the time she nudged him to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.
The President, attending his first White House Easter Egg Roll, forgot to take the patriotic pose as the Marine Band struck up the tune. Melania was caught on camera giving him a gentle prod.
The wifely gesture was the total opposite of the other big Melania social media moment — her 180-degree expression at Trump’s presidential inauguration.
In the brief clip, Melania — tucked behind her husband — was caught on camera beaming and nodding at him when he turned to make a casual remark.
The moment he turned away, her forced smile faded and a frozen, despondent expression remained.
The video circulated online just one day after the presidential couple’s 12th wedding anniversary, prompting the FreeMelania hashtag to pop up across social media.
Adding fuel to the speculation that Melania isn’t loving life in a media fishbowl, she has refused to move to D.C. to live with the President in the White House.
She has said she prefers to stay in their opulent digs in Manhattan, ostensibly while their son Barron, 11, finishes the school year. He’ll attend a prep school in Maryland next year, the family has said. to young and disaffected youth, the difficulty of creating an alternative path, the high unemployment of young men and the lack of a counterideology to that of Daesh (ISIS) and Al Qaeda. The experienced leaders in Trump’s audience would have thought about why people join the terrorist groups in the first place. Unless governments and Islamic religious leaders can address the underlying causes of the terrorist movements, they will be unable to “drive them out.” Oppressive regimes that attempt to solve the terrorist problem simply with force actually strengthen the terrorists’ cause, by pushing more young men to the cause. Thus, Trump’s blank check to do whatever it takes to “drive them out” will actually make things worse. Rather than abandoning American values in the name of “principled realism,” Trump could have said that the way to take the air out of the radical movements is to provide room in Islamic societies for diversity, freedom of expression and participation in government. Torture, jailing, censorship of Western media and autocratic control feed radical extremism. He need not have, as George W. Bush did, espouse rapid movement to democratic governments. Many Islamic nations today do lack the ingredients for an immediate and viable democracy along North American or European lines. Nonetheless, a credible path in that direction is essential to let the next generation believe that it has a stake in the society. Clarke, a senior White House counterterrorism official for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is author of the new book “Warnings.”