In this time of medical, financial and existential crisis, Melania Trump is overseeing construction of her safe house, er, tennis pavilion on the White House grounds. She’s urging others to do something for their communities as well. Needless to say, the Twitterati didn’t take to this well.
Many compared this to Marie Antoinette saying, “Let the eat cake” in response to French citizens starving prior to the French Revolution. Actually, the sentence translates “Let them eat brioche.” Regardless, the French queen probably never uttered these words. But the idea that she did underscores how out of touch the public thought she was.
No one would care about America’s Antoinette constructing a tennis pavilion or playing tennis or going to the US Open if we sensed that she and her husband were really serving the larger community. Mrs. Trump isn’t the first woman to escape into tennis and all those hot male players — see my novel “Burying the Dead” (JMS Books) — no doubt obliterating the image of her husband in his tennis tighty-whities, and she won’t be the last.
The optics, though, don’t look good, and aren’t the Trumps all about optics? But then, Melania did wear a jacket that said, “I really don’t care. Do U?”.