We were all perhaps overly aware that the Trumps “really don’t care”–we didn’t need it emblazoned on Melania Trump’s apparently out of stock and out of season Zara jacket (especially not after her ensemble in Puerto Rico). And yet either she or her extremely blacked out stylist, Hervé Pierre (he is of the French persuasion, after all), didn’t think it might be a poor choice of words to sport while on the way to a detention center in McAllen, Texas filled with children that were separated from their parents as a result of Trump’s harsh mandate against migrant workers crossing the border.
While Melania has been able to exhibit some semblance of Jackie O style in the past (most notably at the dinner held by the Trumps for the Macrons back in April that prompted Brigitte to sadly say, she’s “really fun” but “can’t go outside“–would that that were true), it has all been nullified with this single garment, this one-time public display of total apathy and lack of concern for those she’s meant to be conveying warmth toward. And all because Trump himself certainly couldn’t be asked to represent the “condolences” of the country without a most definite bounty on his head. Plus, no one would believe he was capable of showing the ability to express communion with his fellow man anyway. Not that they believe it of Melania, but she’s been accepted as the de facto “cottoning to good vibrations” substitute (her cachet even being briefly lifted as she exhibited a rare moment of laughter while in the presence of Barack Obama–at a particular funeral).
As though to mirror the same level of gaslighting Trump was once capable of getting away with before he ran for president, the woman who has the unfortunate job of being Melania’s spokesperson today, Stephanie Grisham, coldly remarked, “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message. After today’s important visit to Texas, I hope this isn’t what the media is going to choose to focus on.” How can anyone–not just the media–not focus on it, this glaring declaration of what we already knew to be true?
That makes it even fucking worse (if it’s actually true, for how daft could her stylist be?). That neither Melania herself nor her handlers orbiting the Trump administration did not stop and think that maybe this, of all days, was not the jacket to don. There is a time and place for “cheekiness.” It is not on the way to a child immigrant detention center where kids’ psyches have been irrevocably damaged by the actions of your putrid and gross ass sugar daddy that you will likely divorce once the contract ends (because there’s no way he’s dying–evil never dies, as I’ve always said).
And yes, it does make one especially wistful for the time of Jackie Kennedy, the undeniable zenith of First Lady style and taste in the United States. Her word-free attire–most classically the Chanel suit and pillbox hat (which, incidentally, she, too, wore to Texas)–was a source of comfort and pride to the American people. Now we have the insistent hashtags #SheCares and #ItsJustAJacket to justify sartorial choices that are a direct assault on the very environments Melania is entering–not to mention the people inhabiting them. Stop pretending that every choice that has been made by this administration isn’t affecting. Right down to the very last thread that affirms just how devoid of compassion it is, and how soulless it is making the country–already so long a hub of misery and false promises as a result of refusing to acknowledge capitalism’s failure even more than J. Lo.
