Watching the video, and making every allowance for her lack of fluency in English, I did notice one thing. She was very clearly reading a script, but the way she read it suggests to me that it was unfamiliar to her. She stumbled over some key words, misread some. There was a fairly obvious lack of rehearsal.
That's fairly standard for the Stepford First Lady.
I can't help but wonder if it is a ploy to bring attention back to the Trump-Epstein files. Or perhaps just to get her back to the forefront of people's minds so they'll watch the "documentary" on Amazon.
I would think she is preparing things for life beyond Trump. Once she is no longer First Lady she will not be as protected. If she has any sense she will have an exit strategy already.
Some of the groups representing Epstein survives are not happy with her saying the survivors should be able to tell their stories under oath to Congress if they want to. The groups say that all has been said already. It is not good to put the women through it again.
I can't help but wonder if it is a ploy to bring attention back to the Trump-Epstein files. Or perhaps just to get her back to the forefront of people's minds so they'll watch the "documentary" on Amazon.
This'll be it. She can't be with trump for any reason except the money. When this source dries up she'll need new income streams. She mentioned the film in her - what was it? A statement? A press release? Nope - an advert!
Correct me if I am wrong but from here it looks as though there is very little wrong with the Constitution, it is just that Trump et al just use it when it suits them and ignore it when doesn’t. Is it more of a case of forcing a President to follow the constitution?
Agreed - the problem is not the Constitution, but that a substantial number of powerful people (not just the President) don't want to follow it. "Culture eats policy for breakfast" - only if most people broadly respect the rules will the rules do any good.
But surely this indicates that the Constitution isn't working effectively. If it only works when everyone agrees to play by the rules, it isn't really working. It should be able to resist/constrain those who won't play by the rules.
The test of whether a constitution (of any kind) is effective is not when things are going well - it is when things are going badly. If ruthless people can blithely ignore it, something is wrong. That's all I'm saying.
Ruthless people have always ignored the rules when it suits them. The test of a good political system is whether they are able to escape the consequences afterwards, and the Americans are not the only ones who have problems with this. Look at all the people who got away with millions in the PPE scandal, or the total absence of consequences for the Grenfell disaster. Just taking my own country as an example, there are many others.
Isn’t the Constitution deliberately set up to prevent abuse of power by one of the powers? That’s the whole idea of separation of powers.
What it can’t do is prevent concerted abuse of power by agreement (coerced or otherwise) across the different powers. I’m not sure I recognise what a new mechanism to stop that would look like.
For both the office of the President and representatives in Congress, the remedy is to vote abusers out of office. Meanwhile I guess one of the costs of democracy is that if you vote bad people into power, you learn the hard way what damage that can cause.
The elite collude to ensure that whoever suffers for their errors of judgement, it won't be them. They've had centuries of practice: they're very good at it.
If as expected the Dems do well in the Mid Terms, does that mean those Reps left will be less afraid of Donny boy and be more likely to vote as they see fit as opposed to what the orange one wants?
I can't help but wonder if it is a ploy to bring attention back to the Trump-Epstein files.
But why would they wanna do that? I know the Iran adventure hasn't gone quite like they probably hoped, but if they're looking for a distraction, Epstein would seem to be the last issue they'd wanna focus, especially via a speech reviving allegations about the First Lady.
Who is the "they" you are referring to? Melania seems to have done this, according to the reports I've read, off her own back.
I'm sure plenty in the Trump administration don't want attention to the files, but it's possible she's starting to play her own game here. Possible, not probable.
His gallant defense of Brigitte Macron seemed a little odd, but the context, of course, was Candace Owens' constant transphobic attacks on her, so I suspect it's "My enemy's enemy" etc.
I've been saying for a while now that Tucker and his gang make for an entertaining sideshow("Republicans Against Trump!"), but are relatively insignificant to political outcomes. But that Truth Social might indicate that they're starting to get under his skin.
His gallant defense of Brigitte Macron seemed a little odd, but the context, of course, was Candace Owens' constant transphobic attacks on her, so I suspect it's "My enemy's enemy" etc.
And while I would guess that Trump has never explicitly endorsed the Sandy Hook Truthers, I would also guess he's never previously trashed them, as he does when lambasting Alex Jones "horrendous attack on the families" of the victims.
A few weeks back, Carlson was implying that he was on the verge of being arrested for his holy campaign against the zionist war machine. I figured that was just self-aggrandizing hyperbole, and pretty much still do, but it seems now he's at least on Trump's enemies list.
Yet more statesmanlike language from The World's Greatest President:
Trump warns of fresh strikes if Iran talks fail - New York Post
President Donald Trump has said that US warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if talks in Pakistan fail to produce a deal, in an interview with the New York Post.
“We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made – even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart,” the Post quoted Trump as saying.
“And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.”
He added:
We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon.
In a brief and cryptic message on his Truth Social network earlier, Trump had spoken of the “WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL RESET!!!”
(From the Guardian's live blog)
If, as Trump has stated, Iran's navy, air force, army, evil regime etc. etc. have all been Totally Obliterated (more than once), what exactly is he going to use these 'best weapons ever made' for?
There must be a very dense fog - the Most Thickest Fog EVER!! - inside his head...
Who is the "they" you are referring to? Melania seems to have done this, according to the reports I've read, off her own back.
I'm sure plenty in the Trump administration don't want attention to the files, but it's possible she's starting to play her own game here. Possible, not probable.
My best conjecture at the current time...
If she is being at least abetted, if not outright directed, by others in the admin, it might be they're worried that with the current ceasefire, public attention might be switching its focus from Iran back to Epstein, and they wanna make sure the narrative is something like "Let the victims speak!", rather than "Let's look at the connections between Epstein and Trump's circle". The former, of course, being a major theme of Melania's comments.
Then again, this is a woman who published a biography in which she announced herself to be pro-choice when her husband was heading the ticket of a famously anti-choice political party, so it's possible she's gone off on her own again, screw everybody else. She might sincerely want protect her reputation from the scandal-mongerers, but then, making this speech outta the blue just pushes her own self back into the centre of the story.
I wonder if/when the conspiracy nuts will decide he's talking about the fabled "Great Reset" they've been scaremongering about since covid began.
Most of that crowd are probably not conditioned to think of Donald Trump as part of the globalist conspiracy, even if he uses some of the same words(and here in quite a different context) now and then.
Though with his recent shift to an openly neo-con foreign policy, plus looking at today's Truth Social attack on some of the big names of the paranoid far-right, yeah, there could be some of the conspiracy-nuts reading it that way. I'll be interested to what's being said on some of my guilty-pleasure far-right subreddits in a bit.
Somewhat tangentially, and speculation is (I know) idle, but I do wonder what Mrs Trump makes of her husband's deranged war-games.
This might depend on how one imagines Trump's private speech and demeanor(SAD) matches his public SAD.
If, as some assume, his more belligerent public SAD is just a tool for getting what he wants from adversaries, then he might not be talking that way to Melania in private, and she'd recognize his seemingly deranged Truth Socials as just a public front.
Lately, though, there has been some speculation that he truly is psychiatrically unwell, in which case his private utterances are probably taking a turn for the more alarming as well, and Melania might read his Truth Social posts in that light.
(While many of Trump's foreign and domestic policies are godawful even by the standards of Republican admins, I personally still hold to the view that his more bonkerish Truth Socials are mostly an inept attempt at repeating Nixon's "madman" routine, and not necessarily an indication of how things will actually play out. See "100% tariff on foreign movies".)
Well, it has been said here in the UK that Trump appears to be emulating Nixon.
I appreciate that his private behaviour might be very different to what we see in public. We hear little about Melania in this country - does she usually feature prominently in US news? I take it that she has numerous duties, as First Lady.
Well, it has been said here in the UK that Trump appears to be emulating Nixon.
Yeah, I think I saw that headline in The Guardian. Persuant to my earlier "inept madman" comment, I think I personally expand that to "Guy trying to do the madman, but hasn't figured out that politics is different than business, and international-politics is a whole other sacka shit unto itself(*).
(*) Given the existing parameter of possible outcomes, Trump did a fairly good madman act when he segued through his "little rocket man" to "beautiful love letters" phases with the DPRK. But with that, he was basically coasting on existing historical currents, because:
1. Transnational insult-matches are a long-standing feature of DPRK-ROK/USA relations, so Trump wasn't upping the ante by all that much.
2. The Korean Democratic Party is brandtish in its approach to the North, conducting intermittent summits and cash-transfers over the years, so were generally enthusiastic about the thaw.
3. The Americans regularly conduct anti-North war games every year, and the North Koreans apparently keep the frozen remains of fallen US servicemen on ice. So, it was a pretty easy connection to say "We'll stop the war games if you give us some of our boys back for a decent burial." But neither the cancellation of war games nor the body-gifting was unprecedented in the history of the relevant conflict(*).
(*) Otto Warmbier's family also got a measure of dignity from all that summit as well. For decades now, there has been a small trickle of Americans who, for actually quite disparate reasons(military desertion, religion, journalism, dark tourism etc) ill-advisedly run into the DPRK, often becoming tragicomic players in high-level diplomatic squabbles.
Of course Kissinger and Nixon played the “Madman” card re China and Vietnam. With some effect.
The difference is that the Trump administration doesn’t have a Kissinger. And Vance is no Kissinger. And I doubt Trump is putting on an act.
Is Trump actually insane as well as in cognitive decline. Probably. So it’s likely that does spin over into his private behaviour. I think he’s always been unpleasant so he’s probably unpleasant squared now.
I can't help but wonder if it is a ploy to bring attention back to the Trump-Epstein files.
But why would they wanna do that? I know the Iran adventure hasn't gone quite like they probably hoped, but if they're looking for a distraction, Epstein would seem to be the last issue they'd wanna focus, especially via a speech reviving allegations about the First Lady.
Rather late to this, but it reminds me of the Covid joke - 'last week, when I thought I needed to cover a fart, I'd cough; this week...'
Seems like if it doesn't move Trump will want his name on it. Including a new terminal at Dulles Airport in Virginia. Those designs are here. Be sure to look at the last of the pictures.
I have heard some Democratic Senators have proposed legislation to prohibit sitting presidents from naming a federal building after himself/herself.
Just keep everything locked up in the courts until he is out of office, please.
That degree of informality, when you haven’t been invited to use it, is insulting. Rather like using “thou” to someone you were on formal terms with in Shakespeare’s day.
The worst person I ever had to work with was someone I tended to refer to when describing their outrages as 'Chummy' - as in 'Guess what Chummy's done now!'
It can be a jokey way of expressing the very opposite sentiment to what the familiar tone might usually suggest.
Seems like if it doesn't move Trump will want his name on it. Including a new terminal at Dulles Airport in Virginia. Those designs are here. Be sure to look at the last of the pictures.
I have heard some Democratic Senators have proposed legislation to prohibit sitting presidents from naming a federal building after himself/herself.
Just keep everything locked up in the courts until he is out of office, please.
I am sure that Dulles Airport does need an update. It is more than 50 years old. However, there is no way it needs his name on it. I hope those Democratic Senators can make that happen.
I find it weird with Trump, like calling Hitler Addy.
I find all the supposedly funny or insulting nicknames for Trump, whether something like Donny or something with a reference to orange, juvenile. It’s stooping to Trump’s level.
I guess I’m weird that way, but frankly it annoys the hell out of me.
Comments
Watching the video, and making every allowance for her lack of fluency in English, I did notice one thing. She was very clearly reading a script, but the way she read it suggests to me that it was unfamiliar to her. She stumbled over some key words, misread some. There was a fairly obvious lack of rehearsal.
Plus her demeanour looked mechanical to me.
Maybe that’s just me?
I can't help but wonder if it is a ploy to bring attention back to the Trump-Epstein files. Or perhaps just to get her back to the forefront of people's minds so they'll watch the "documentary" on Amazon.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/melania-trump-epstein-files-live-updates-b2954816.html
He then - separately - went on a massive rant against various alt-right figures who have been critiquing the Iran action:
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mj3nxe4rfc2b
Some of the groups representing Epstein survives are not happy with her saying the survivors should be able to tell their stories under oath to Congress if they want to. The groups say that all has been said already. It is not good to put the women through it again.
This'll be it. She can't be with trump for any reason except the money. When this source dries up she'll need new income streams. She mentioned the film in her - what was it? A statement? A press release? Nope - an advert!
But surely this indicates that the Constitution isn't working effectively. If it only works when everyone agrees to play by the rules, it isn't really working. It should be able to resist/constrain those who won't play by the rules.
The test of whether a constitution (of any kind) is effective is not when things are going well - it is when things are going badly. If ruthless people can blithely ignore it, something is wrong. That's all I'm saying.
What it can’t do is prevent concerted abuse of power by agreement (coerced or otherwise) across the different powers. I’m not sure I recognise what a new mechanism to stop that would look like.
For both the office of the President and representatives in Congress, the remedy is to vote abusers out of office. Meanwhile I guess one of the costs of democracy is that if you vote bad people into power, you learn the hard way what damage that can cause.
But why would they wanna do that? I know the Iran adventure hasn't gone quite like they probably hoped, but if they're looking for a distraction, Epstein would seem to be the last issue they'd wanna focus, especially via a speech reviving allegations about the First Lady.
I'm sure plenty in the Trump administration don't want attention to the files, but it's possible she's starting to play her own game here. Possible, not probable.
His gallant defense of Brigitte Macron seemed a little odd, but the context, of course, was Candace Owens' constant transphobic attacks on her, so I suspect it's "My enemy's enemy" etc.
I've been saying for a while now that Tucker and his gang make for an entertaining sideshow("Republicans Against Trump!"), but are relatively insignificant to political outcomes. But that Truth Social might indicate that they're starting to get under his skin.
And while I would guess that Trump has never explicitly endorsed the Sandy Hook Truthers, I would also guess he's never previously trashed them, as he does when lambasting Alex Jones "horrendous attack on the families" of the victims.
A few weeks back, Carlson was implying that he was on the verge of being arrested for his holy campaign against the zionist war machine. I figured that was just self-aggrandizing hyperbole, and pretty much still do, but it seems now he's at least on Trump's enemies list.
Trump warns of fresh strikes if Iran talks fail - New York Post
President Donald Trump has said that US warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if talks in Pakistan fail to produce a deal, in an interview with the New York Post.
“We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made – even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart,” the Post quoted Trump as saying.
“And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.”
He added:
We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon.
In a brief and cryptic message on his Truth Social network earlier, Trump had spoken of the “WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL RESET!!!”
(From the Guardian's live blog)
If, as Trump has stated, Iran's navy, air force, army, evil regime etc. etc. have all been Totally Obliterated (more than once), what exactly is he going to use these 'best weapons ever made' for?
There must be a very dense fog - the Most Thickest Fog EVER!! - inside his head...
My best conjecture at the current time...
If she is being at least abetted, if not outright directed, by others in the admin, it might be they're worried that with the current ceasefire, public attention might be switching its focus from Iran back to Epstein, and they wanna make sure the narrative is something like "Let the victims speak!", rather than "Let's look at the connections between Epstein and Trump's circle". The former, of course, being a major theme of Melania's comments.
Then again, this is a woman who published a biography in which she announced herself to be pro-choice when her husband was heading the ticket of a famously anti-choice political party, so it's possible she's gone off on her own again, screw everybody else. She might sincerely want protect her reputation from the scandal-mongerers, but then, making this speech outta the blue just pushes her own self back into the centre of the story.
Most of that crowd are probably not conditioned to think of Donald Trump as part of the globalist conspiracy, even if he uses some of the same words(and here in quite a different context) now and then.
Though with his recent shift to an openly neo-con foreign policy, plus looking at today's Truth Social attack on some of the big names of the paranoid far-right, yeah, there could be some of the conspiracy-nuts reading it that way. I'll be interested to what's being said on some of my guilty-pleasure far-right subreddits in a bit.
This might depend on how one imagines Trump's private speech and demeanor(SAD) matches his public SAD.
If, as some assume, his more belligerent public SAD is just a tool for getting what he wants from adversaries, then he might not be talking that way to Melania in private, and she'd recognize his seemingly deranged Truth Socials as just a public front.
Lately, though, there has been some speculation that he truly is psychiatrically unwell, in which case his private utterances are probably taking a turn for the more alarming as well, and Melania might read his Truth Social posts in that light.
(While many of Trump's foreign and domestic policies are godawful even by the standards of Republican admins, I personally still hold to the view that his more bonkerish Truth Socials are mostly an inept attempt at repeating Nixon's "madman" routine, and not necessarily an indication of how things will actually play out. See "100% tariff on foreign movies".)
I appreciate that his private behaviour might be very different to what we see in public. We hear little about Melania in this country - does she usually feature prominently in US news? I take it that she has numerous duties, as First Lady.
Yeah, I think I saw that headline in The Guardian. Persuant to my earlier "inept madman" comment, I think I personally expand that to "Guy trying to do the madman, but hasn't figured out that politics is different than business, and international-politics is a whole other sacka shit unto itself(*).
(*) Given the existing parameter of possible outcomes, Trump did a fairly good madman act when he segued through his "little rocket man" to "beautiful love letters" phases with the DPRK. But with that, he was basically coasting on existing historical currents, because:
1. Transnational insult-matches are a long-standing feature of DPRK-ROK/USA relations, so Trump wasn't upping the ante by all that much.
2. The Korean Democratic Party is brandtish in its approach to the North, conducting intermittent summits and cash-transfers over the years, so were generally enthusiastic about the thaw.
3. The Americans regularly conduct anti-North war games every year, and the North Koreans apparently keep the frozen remains of fallen US servicemen on ice. So, it was a pretty easy connection to say "We'll stop the war games if you give us some of our boys back for a decent burial." But neither the cancellation of war games nor the body-gifting was unprecedented in the history of the relevant conflict(*).
(*) Otto Warmbier's family also got a measure of dignity from all that summit as well. For decades now, there has been a small trickle of Americans who, for actually quite disparate reasons(military desertion, religion, journalism, dark tourism etc) ill-advisedly run into the DPRK, often becoming tragicomic players in high-level diplomatic squabbles.
The difference is that the Trump administration doesn’t have a Kissinger. And Vance is no Kissinger. And I doubt Trump is putting on an act.
Is Trump actually insane as well as in cognitive decline. Probably. So it’s likely that does spin over into his private behaviour. I think he’s always been unpleasant so he’s probably unpleasant squared now.
Rather late to this, but it reminds me of the Covid joke - 'last week, when I thought I needed to cover a fart, I'd cough; this week...'
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/us/politics/arch-washington-trump.html?nl=breaking-news&segment_id=218034
(You should be able to see this for free)
Another distraction from Epstein, now that the War has been TOTALLY WON?
Right now, I would bet money it doesn't.
Liberty and justice? For all rich white men.
I saw the size of this, and I just can't even.
I wonder if we could get him for criminal lack of taste.
I bet the golden statue on the top turns out to have Trump's face...
I have heard some Democratic Senators have proposed legislation to prohibit sitting presidents from naming a federal building after himself/herself.
Just keep everything locked up in the courts until he is out of office, please.
That is an understatement.
His mate in Hungary is on shaky ground. If Maduro could go, so could Donny
I actually like that one, sounds close to Addle
Donny is also often used when addressing a little boy. We have already established he has the maturity of a three year old.
It can be a jokey way of expressing the very opposite sentiment to what the familiar tone might usually suggest.
I am sure that Dulles Airport does need an update. It is more than 50 years old. However, there is no way it needs his name on it. I hope those Democratic Senators can make that happen.
I guess I’m weird that way, but frankly it annoys the hell out of me.