Podcast: Melania, A White Suit, & Stormy Daniels

WHEN First Lady Melania Trump made her entrance before her husband’s State of the Union speech I did a double take.

A modern-styled white pant suit was the last thing I imagined Melania would wear.

Melania's #SOTU suit stood out, which @TimTeeman speculates was purposeful: "A statement not just of independence but separation, and as powerful a statement of feminism as Melania could make in contrast to what many see as her husband’s misogyny." https://t.co/AatyfJ8twy

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 31, 2018

The statement couldn’t have been louder, even if the response from media, political pundits, and everyone else resembled a disinterested shrug.

Melania might be sending a message.

From one of the two New York Times pieces I talk about in this episode.

Of course, it’s possible Mrs. Trump chose the suit, an ivory Christian Dior style with cropped trousers and curvaceous jacket, to stand out against the sea of black worn by the Democratic Women’s Working Group and its supporters, following the donning of black at the Golden Globes in honor of Time’s Up and #MeToo. (Though many of those same women wore white to her husband’s first address to a joint session of Congress last year.)

It’s possible Mrs. Trump did it to show solidarity with the female members of the G.O.P., who had been urged to wear patriotic red, white and blue, as were the members of the Cabinet. Many of the men sported ties that matched the blue ones worn by the president and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, and the red one on Vice President Mike Pence.

It’s possible she just liked the color, and what it symbolizes about new beginnings (also, of course, purity, but that takes us back to the idea something else might be going on). It’s possible she had no idea that Maria Grazia Chiuri, the artistic director of Christian Dior, made waves in her first collection with a best-selling T-shirt announcing “we should all be feminists.”

It’s possible…

What could be more humiliating than learning in public your husband screwed a porn star days after his wife had given birth to their first child together?

First Lady Melania Trump didn’t accompany her husband to Davos. She’s rumored to have spent time outside the White House since the Stormy news broke. The President and First Lady didn’t travel to the Capitol together on the night of the SOTU.

Melania’s white suit presentation is a Trumpian move not unlike what Stormy Daniels did with Jimmy Kimmel.

Under the grip of a nondisclosure settlement agreement, Stormy Daniels released an initial statement.

It was followed by another statement with a signature Ms. Daniels isn’t claiming as her own. Now it seems Stormy Daniels may have trumped Trump.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel is on the trail.

…and in this week’s “Between the Sheets” podcast, so am I.

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