Melania Trump in suffragist white at the State of the Union. Image here. Tom Brenner/The New York Times
President Donald J. Trumpet went all “Kumbaya” in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, proclaiming the pablum platitude that every president proclaims – that the state of the union is strong, because the American people are strong and together they’ll continue to be strong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Look, it’s too little, too late. The mean-spirited, divisive damage is already done, with more always just an unscripted tweet away. And in case you didn’t get that message, consider his great plan for infrastructure – finally – some half-baked public-private partnership that will continue to stratify the haves, the have-mores and the have-nots.
With Trumpet’s approval ratings at historic lows, the stock market tanking and the Repubs desperate to release some FBI emails that purport to show bias in Robert Mueller’s Russkie-gate investigation, the noose is tightening.
I’d much rather talk about Trumpet wife Melania, arriving with her guests for the address to Congress, not with the prez; wearing suffragist white; and reserving her smiles for anyone but him. Daily News columnist Linda Stasi – never one to pull punches – wrote Tuesday that Melania should have the guts to do what Hillary didn’t – throw the bum out. But Stasi misreads the two couples. Whatever you may think of the Bill and Hillary Clinton, they’re equals in intellect and ambition.
Whereas the Donald and Melania’s union is not a marriage of equal hearts and minds. She thought she could parlay her looks into power, or at least the status and luxe power conveys. In this, she’s like Gwendolen Harleth, the antiheroine of George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda.” Melania isn’t the first woman who thought she could change a man. She won’t be the last.
But even if the dawn has come, it doesn’t mean Melania can do anything dramatic with her newfound revelations. And it’s not just because she has an ironclad prenup. You’ve got to figure Trump would never let her leave, because she knows too much, and he would take their son, Barron, a vulnerable flower looking for his place in the sun, just to be strong on her.
No, Melania is stuck – for the moment – just like us.