Melania Trump at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.
It’s official: Melania Trump has Princess Diana-ed the Donald.
One of the ways that the late, loved, lamented Diana, Princess of Wales, checkmated her philandering hubby, Prince Charles, was with a carefully timed photo op – looking beautifully forlorn alone in front of the Taj Mahal, that monument to love, in Catherine Walker red and purple; or drop-dead gorgeous in that black, silk, off-the-shoulder Stambolian cocktail number at the Serpentine Gallery in London after Chuck-chop revealed his infidelity on TV; or purposeful in the charity work she did, supporting AIDS sufferers and landmine victims.
Faced with Stormy weather – in the form of Trumpet’s alleged payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels – Melania climbed into her black stilettos and let them carry her off to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, alone, to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day Saturday this Saturday. Later, she posted three photographs and released this statement about the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust:
“My thoughts and prayers are with the people whose lives and families were broken by the horrors of the Holocaust. Yet it is also through our shared humanity that we come together now in commemoration, strength and love. My heart is with you, and we remember.”
Then she took herself off for some quality me-time to Mar-a-lago. Where she most decidedly was not was in Davos, Switzerland to hear Trumpet tout “America First” at the World Economic Forum as was originally planned. Savvy in the use of social media – unlike her husband – Melania also chose not to acknowledge her 13th wedding anniversary (Jan. 22). And that, my friends, is what’s known as gesture politics.
Infidelity and marital estrangement are hard on anyone, male or female. But they seem to be harder on women, maybe because women have had traditionally fewer resources or perhaps have loved too well. For a beautiful woman, infidelity must be especially galling and humiliating.
Yes, you say, Melania knew what she was getting into. She’s no innocent, having posed nude. But we all make our beds and lie in them. Some are soft and well-feathered. Others turn out to be beds of nails. But none of us can remain in them forever. We have to get up, even from a sick bed, and reengage with the world.
Melania’s Holocaust Memorial visit suggests that she might ready to recast herself in the Diana mold – to locate in her own unhappiness the suffering of others. God knows, there are any number of causes she could throw herself into beyond cyber bullying, which may be a dream too far given that her husband often acts like the cyber bully in chief.
Or maybe it’s enough, given the bizarre times we find ourselves in, that Melania serve as a counterweight to her husband. After Charlottesville, she preached love while he fanned the flames of hate.
Who knows? Melania Trump may yet turn out to be America’s stealth Donald-deterrent.