POLITICS | ROGER KIMBALL
I suppose it is not surprising that clothes
should loom large in a discussion of Mela-
nia Trump. She is a beautiful woman with a
striking sense of fashion and a closet full of
fetching duds. Really, she is just following
Polonius’s advice: ‘Costly thy habit as thy
purse can buy/ But not expressed in fancy,
rich not gaudy...’ But of course the media
interest in Melania Trump’s wardrobe is an
extension of their hatred of her husband.
Heading down to Texas to meet the chil-
dren of illegal immigrants, she wears a coat
with the legend ‘I really don’t care, do you?’‘Oh my God! Is that a callous message
to the poor children, cruelly separated from
their criminal parents by the mean man in
the White House?’
No. As Melania explained, the message
was intended for the purveyors of fake news,
the left-wing media who spend their time
spinning webs of hostile innuendo.
Melania Trump wears a white pantsuit
to the State of the Union Address. But...
but isn’t the white pantsuit Hillary Clinton’s
emblem? Is Melania covertly dissenting
from her husband and declaring her solidar-
ity with Hillary?
First of all, not to be cruel about it, no one
would mistake Melania Trump in a pant suitfor Hillary Clinton in similar attire. Contrast
the Venus of Urbino and the Venus of Wil-
lendorf. Second, the skein of what Melania
calls ‘speculation’ is so patently catty blo-
viation intended not to illuminate but to
wound. Why pay it any attention?
In the interests of full disclosure, I should
acknowledge that I rarely watch television
news any more than I am in the habit of
bathing in polluted water. But a journalist’s
lot can be demanding. Asked to comment
on the kerfuffle over Melania Trump’s ABC
interview, I decided to forego the advice
proffered by Sydney Smith — he never read
a book before reviewing it, he said, because
he found that it prejudiced his opinion —
and actually watch the interview.
For someone like Sydney Smith who
enjoys having his prejudices confirmed, it
was in some respects a pleasant experience.
The many clips of carping, malicious news-
casters amply bolstered my low opinion of
that tribe. And Melania Trump, calm, cool
and collected, was a model of patient dignity.
The interview was supposed to be a
racy game of ‘Gotcha!’ ‘What about that
Access Hollywood tape, eh? What about his
rumoured infidelities? Did the President
apologise to you?’
I liked the White House response: yes,
the President often apologises to Melania
— ‘for all the media nonsense and scrutiny
she has been under since entering the White
House’. Good for him.
Melania Trump set the tone for her entire
hour-long interview at the beginning. Tom
Llamas began with the question ‘Melania
Trump is ...’ and asked her to complete the
sentence. Here, too, she ended by following
the sage advice of Polonius. That’s a hard
one, Melania said, and then provided the
perfect inventory: ‘a mother, a wife, a daugh-
ter, a sister, a friend, the First Lady of the
United States, caring, compassionate, strong,
independent, very detail-oriented, and stay-
ing true to herself.’
This interview was meant to demean Mel-
ania Trump and damage her husband. Like
so many press gambits these days, it back-
fired and reflected brilliantly on them both.SPECTATOR.CO.UK/COFFEEHOUSE
Hourly updates from Parliament and beyond.I
am not sure that Melania Trump had the
introduction of Henry IV Part 2 in mind
when she sat down for her free and frank
discussion with the jackals of the — er, with
a respected ABC correspondent during her
recent trip to Africa. But time and again she
dilated upon the ‘unpleasant’, erring and
intrusive ‘speculation’ of the media.
In Shakespeare’s play, the action starts
with a warning: ‘Rumour is a pipe/ Blown
by surmises, jealousies, conjectures/ And of
so easy and so plain a stop/ That the blunt
monster with uncounted heads,/ The still-
discordant wavering multitude,/ Can play
upon it.’
There are a lot of chattering, still discord-
ant heads on view in Tom Llamas’s sit-down
with the First Lady. ‘Once, a private woman,’
the two-L Llamas declares in his opening
voice-over. ‘Now, the most deeply personal
details of her life on full display.’
Well, not really. ‘No topic is off limits,’ Lla-
mas excitedly bleated. But although there
were several embarrassing questions — the
Access Hollywood tape made an appear-
ance, as did Stormy Daniels — somehow
the embarrassment pooled at the feet of the
interviewer, not the interviewee. ‘Why are
you asking her that?’ was a question I found
myself posing frequently when wading
through the muck of this interview.
The Slovenia-born Melania was a fash-
ion model before meeting Donald Trump,
and she is easily the most glamorous First
Lady since Jackie Kennedy. Indeed, once
you scrape off the fetid glint of Kennedy
mystique, she is probably the most glamor-
ous ever. Yet when she wears a white pith
helmet on her trip to Africa the press goes
wild. Isn’t a pith helmet a ‘symbol of coloni-
alism’ and (alleged) European exploitation
of Africa?
No. It’s a pith helmet. She wore a safari
hat on a safari, as one of Melania’s spokes-
women tartly observed. Get over it.
‘But she posed in front of the Sphinx
dressed like some character out of Raiders
of the Lost Ark!’ ‘There’s fashion and there’s
costume,’ intoned one talking head, ‘and this
is costume.’
Melania had the perfect comeback: ‘I
wish people would focus on what I do, not
what I wear.’
Melania stays true to herself
This interview was meant to demean
the First Lady. Like so many press
gambits these days, it backfiredPresented by Isabel HardmanTHIS WEEK:
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast