Melania by Melania Trump review – a blame-dodging masterclass

Story by Lloyd Green. October 13, 2024.

  • Blame and Deflection: Melania frequently blames staffers for various issues, including the plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s speech, while also stressing her love for her husband.1
  • Policy Stances: She strongly supports abortion rights, which contrasts with her husband’s actions and the Republican party’s stance.
  • Selective Narratives: The memoir omits significant details about other women in Donald Trump’s life and controversial events like January 6.
  • Personal Independence: Melania emphasizes her financial independence and personal brand, highlighting her business ventures.

“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” she thunders. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Simply put, such words jar with her party’s record. And yet, another chapter is more telling still.

The Blame Game

Melania dumps on staffers for drafting the speech to the 2016 Republican convention in which she plagiarized Michelle Obama. Except Melania manages also to point the finger at herself. “During my review of many speeches of previous first ladies, Michelle’s emphasis on the fundamental values of hard work, integrity, and kindness resonated deeply,” she writes, of a conversation with the aide who wrote the speech. In other words, Melania shows she was familiar with Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic convention, portions of which she would repeat to Republicans in Cleveland in 2016.

There’s more. Before speaking at the RNC, Melania “rehearsed multiple times with the teleprompter, feeling confident in my delivery”. And yet, she claims, when the plagiarism was noticed and a media firestorm blew up, she was shocked.

“Upon closer examination, the undeniable similarities between the two speeches left me reeling.”

Really?

“I trusted that any and all political and legal vetting had been taken care of, but now I realized that the campaign and RNC had left me on my own.”

Talk about throwing the staff under any passing bus. And yet, to quote the deathless words of Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr’s fiancée: “The best is yet to come.”

“‘Why was the speech not vetted?’, I asked Donald in frustration … From then on, I realized the importance of being intimately involved with every detail of my public life. No longer would I delegate specific tasks or trust others to ensure my reputation was protected.”2

Specifically, Melania blames Meredith McIver of the Trump Organization – to whom she says she herself read Michelle Obama’s words, words Melania then repeatedly practiced. As the saying goes, shit rolls downhill.

The January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the US Capitol

When it comes to her husband, too, Melania is not in the blame game. The chaos of January 6 is dealt with as swiftly as anything inconvenient that actually makes it to her pages. She wags her finger at those who assaulted the Capitol in an attempt to overturn Donald’s 2020 defeat but also claims to have been unaware of events for most of that terrible day.

“The violence we witnessed was unequivocally unacceptable,”1 she writes. But in her next breath, she adds that she “recognized that many individuals felt the election was mishandled and that the vice president should halt the confirmation process”3.

As for her husband’s exhortation to the far-right Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” around the election, or his forecast of a “Big protest in DC on January 6th[,] Be there, will be wild!”, or his exhortation to followers to “fight like hell”?

Crickets.

  1. @RalphHightower – Okay, she does have a conscience. ↩ ↩2

  2. @RalphHightower: Honey, your reputation is tarnished by association with your hubby. ↩

  3. @RalphHightower – Although she does believe her hubby’s lies that he won. ↩