Having ended bullying with her Be Best campaign, haunted porcelain figurine Melania Trump needed a challenge. What could occupy her prodigious energy and time between spa treatments? Solving world hunger? Ending cancer? Spending five minutes alone with her husband without wishing for the sweet veil of death to descend on her?
Oh, ending the Ukraine-Russia war? Sure, why not. Might as well take a run at it while she’s waiting for the latest Botox injections to cure.
On Friday, the first lady announced that she had brokered a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. A temporary ceasefire. In one city, Oleshky, which has been occupied by Russia for almost five years and has been so cut off from the world that the few remaining residents are facing starvation.
Da Chicago pope, Leo, has been trying to get Vladimir Putin to agree to a brief pause in the fighting so humanitarian aid can get in and any civilians who want to leave can do so. Then on Friday, we learned that Melania Trump had also been lending her time to the effort. In fact, if you listen to her and the paid toady she has glazing her on right-wing TV networks, she did all the work.
Is Melania, in claiming responsibility for brokering the ceasefire, stealing the pope’s valor? Let us consider the sequence of events:
The Pope calls Vladimir Putin from his hospital bed after surgery for lung cancer to lobby the Butcher of the Donbas for a ceasefire around Oleshky so aid can get in and civilians can leave. It is only the latest in a year and a half of conversations about the war between the two men.
A week later, the ceasefire is announced.
Melania says, “I did it! Me, Melania! I am greatest first lady in history of United States! Take that, Ida McKinley!”
Hey, don’t tell us, lady. Tell your husband, the president, who capitulated so completely to Putin last week that the Russian leader figured he could humor the old man. Make himself look reasonable to anyone who isn’t an idiot. He tossed you a bone and you grabbed at it like a Doberman.
The announcement was made on Newsmax by Marc Beckman, the senior adviser who has spent the past months trying to convince the public that Melania Trump is “the single most consequential first lady in the history of our nation.” That he said this on television without his tongue immediately swelling up and choking off his airway is probably proof of Satan’s existence:
“In my opinion, this is the first step in everlasting peace between these two nations,” Beckman told the golden retrievers manning the Newsmax anchor desk. Oh sure, man. Melania Trump is going to get Vladimir Putin to do what his flailing, contracting economy and 1.5 million soldiers killed, wounded or missing haven’t: Give up his decades-long imperial ambitions to reconstruct the Russian empire of Peter the Great.
Beckman was back at it on Saturday on Fox, crediting Melon with doing all the work and claiming the pope just sort of rode her coattails and basked in her reflected glory:
This is true if you conveniently ignore the fact that stopping the Ukraine war has been on the pope’s agenda since the beginning of his papacy a year and a half ago. Last week was far from the first time he’s called Vladimir Putin to discuss what it would take to bring a resolution to the conflict.
We honestly don’t remember any first lady having a hype man before, or at least not one who was this unsubtle and embarrassing. John Holmes couldn’t have done a better glaze job.
Could Melon really have had something to do with the ceasefire, which won’t start until Oct. 29, and thus right now is more of a concept than an actual thing? Sure. She has been yammering for over a year about Ukraine and her great work getting Putin to return 34 kidnapped Ukrainian children to their families. (Only about 20,000 more to go!) She has written letters and claims to have a direct line to Putin. Which isn’t that unusual. Plenty of people, for a variety of reasons, have the numbers of their spouses’ friends programmed into their phones.
And the spouses of leaders can play important roles in diplomatic efforts. First ladies throughout history have probably not gotten the credit they deserve for smoothing their husbands’ relationships with foreign leaders and softening their images with the publics of other nations along with our own.
Of course, if you are Raisa Gorbachev you can almost derail nuclear disarmament talks by being a huge bitch to Nancy Reagan. But at least Nancy Reagan — and we can’t believe we are saying this, given that she was no stranger to the “being a bitch to other people” department — made the effort.
So how much did Melania’s efforts play into this outcome? It is impossible to say, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
First, given how much he’s won from Trump the last couple of weeks, it makes sense for Putin to throw him one tiny victory that will likely change nothing about the ongoing war. It’s not as if he’s giving up the territory, just letting some humanitarian aid into it. It costs him nothing.
Second, many of the negotiators and leaders involved in the temporary truce thanked Melania for her contributions. But of course it is in everyone’s interest to flatter her and, indirectly, the walking cholesterol clot that she’s married to. Particularly the Ukrainians, given the president has recently abandoned them and aligned himself with Russia.
Finally, call us cynical, but why after all these years is Melon, who has been the least visible first lady of our lifetime, suddenly jumping up and down to find a high-profile cause? Did she realize she only has two years left and her legacy has mostly been putting up Christmas decorations at the White House that replace any holiday vibe with that of an abstract film by a student who has watched too much German Expressionism?
In other words, Melon has the usual Trumpist arrogance and neediness for praise that afflicts the rest of the family. Thus we are given the impression that no one else could have pulled this off, only Melania can go to Moscow, et cetera and so forth.
From her statement on the White House website:
“It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible,” she said in a statement.
Okay, sure. The pope did not need divine intervention to get the ball into the end zone; he needed Melania Trump.
Melon’s statement also had this extremely funny line:
“I have also secured an impartial American media organization to accompany and document Russian and Ukrainian teams on the ground throughout the process. This will play a significant role in ensuring that the wishes of each family are faithfully respected.”
That impartial American media organization? It’s Newsmax. Which we suppose is a step up from sending LindellTV or the Gateway Pundit, but not by much.
Of course, if you wanted to really spread the good word, you’d get multiple media organizations to cover the blessed event. What Melon is doing here is getting a right-wing network to stage a photo op for her husband’s administration. Did we mention that a vast majority of the public disagrees with Trump’s Ukraine policy?
The United States used to have a secretary of State and an entire diplomatic corps that would have done all the legwork here. But this is the Trump administration, which throws jobs at Trump family members the same way Donald might have once told Eric to take over the family winery because Don Jr. was too busy developing a Trump Tower in Manila. This is Melon pulling her weight.
You know what would be a hysterical troll? If the Nobel Committee awards Melania the next Peace Prize. JD Vance will be taking the oath of office approximately fifteen seconds later.
And if the Nobel committee refuses to recognize the world-historic peacemaking abilities of yet another Trump, maybe FIFA can make up another peace prize to give her.
Don’t get us wrong. Any relief of the suffering of the civilians left in Oleshky is a plus. But at the end of the day, this is the Trumps once again using the nation’s resources for their own self-aggrandizement. Any help to real people is purely accidental.
Does the White House think this softens the president’s image? Helps with the midterms? Makes everyone forget that Trump just finished selling Ukraine out?
All we know is that the Trumps don’t do anything out of the kindness of the blackened cinders that are their hearts.
[NYT / WH Website]
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People in Oleshky are eating fucking weeds to stay alive and this hat rack wants a tongue job.
She deserves her husband.
Melon had f*ck-all to do with this “ceasefire” (which, given recent history, will likely last for two hours), and the best evidence is that Melanoma is screaming for attention. But I guess IF she had anything at all to do with it, it helps that she comes from Central Europe and (probably claims to) speak the language.
So she’s a shameless attention seeker. Who made a career living on a fraudulent visa and slumming it with Epstein. No surprises.
The First Ladies who ACTUALLY had a hand in diplomacy—ELEANOR GODDAMN ROOSEVELT, anyone?—are supremely pissed off.