First lady’s stand for humanity
Now that she’s shown their soft side, she needs to get tough with the suits in that White House and make sure they roll back those child separations in a way that doesn’t further traumatize the children and punish the first lady for caring.
One could forgive every Democrat and immigrant if they eyed Melania Trump’s visit to a migrant shelter in Arizona today with weary-eyed cynicism.
This was a highly managed photo op designed to soften the mean-spirited split of immigrant children from their parents.
However, it would be wrong to ignore the good that happened here Thursday.
The first lady’s global image matters to this White House, and Melania Trump has now staked her reputation on the humane treatment of those more than 2,000 children drawn into the jaws of her husband’s no-tolerance immigration policy.
“She cares about children deeply,” said Stephanie Grisham, her spokeswoman. “She’s advocating for quality care for these children under difficult circumstances.”
If the president and bureaucracy that separated those children from their parents and dispersed them in detention centers across the country can’t reverse-engineer this monstrosity, it will mean Melania was a tool whose White House role is limited to catwalking the tarmac.
Melania has sent signals in recent weeks that she is a woman of substance who will declare her independence in ways more substantial than she did in the early days of this administration, when she delayed her move from Trump Tower to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Last week, her husband issued an executive order to end the child separation, and Melania decided it was time to visit those migrant kids.
“She wants to see what’s happening for herself,” said her press secretary at the time. “And she wants to lend her support — executive order or not.”
“This was her decision,” Grisham told the Washington Post. “She told her staff she wanted to go, and we made that happen. (The president) is supportive of it, but she told him, ‘I’m headed down to Texas,’ and he supported it.”
What was the Trump administration signaling with all that? And exactly what was Melania communicating with her notorious jacket that read, “I really don’t care, do you?”
It’s is hard to know.
But one of the first bits of news to break in Arizona was that Melania was not, we repeat, was wearing a jacket. Lesson learned.
The jacket blew up the message a week ago, and the message this time was unambiguous. Melania is the softer side of an administration elected to play smash-mouth with the liberals, the Chinese and the border-crossers.
Irene Matz, who has studied the communication styles of first ladies at California State University-Fullerton, told USA TODAY, “For her to go and reach out to these children — and as a mother and a parent — it speaks volumes coming from her.
“And she’s making a strong statement as the conscience of a White House that has been so turbulent and has sent so many mixed messages on this issue.”
One of Donald Trump’s worst impulses is to act without planning. It’s clear he deployed his no-tolerance immigration policy with no mind to logistics — very much like his disastrous travel ban. He blundered badly. Retreated grudgingly. And now must prove he’s not as cold-blooded as his policy came across.
Almost weekly, Trump seems to raise the bar on bad behavior. He does it so often that deeds once thought disqualifying are now long forgotten.
But child separation will not soon be forgotten by immigrant families, both documented and undocumented. You mess with people’s children and make them suffer while you’re indifferent, and you’ll earn their eternal enmity.
“No tolerance” immigration has further infuriated Democrats who were already set to crawl on glass to vote in the midterms.
Melania as emissary sends the signal that even an administration that prides itself on destruction has to comply with some basic standards of decency.
Now that she’s shown their soft side, she needs to get tough with the suits in that White House and make sure they roll back those child separations in a way that doesn’t further traumatize the children and punish the first lady for caring.
Melania is quiet, but she’s no slouch. She speaks six languages (Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, English, French, Italian and German). She comes from a working-class region of the former Yugoslavia that had been held together by the strongman Tito. When Tito died, so did the unity of his people. The Balkans went back to their historical norm of fighting and killing each other.
Wouldn’t it be something if a woman from a place synonymous with fierce hatred and division became the unifying force in an administration that feeds on hatred and division?