In her new memoir, Melania Trump “trashes” Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy when he was president and takes credit for getting her husband to end his controversial family separation policy.
But the former first lady seems to undermine any good will she might receive for her compassionate intervention on behalf of migrant families by defending her decision to wear a controversial item of clothing during her 2018 visit to the U.S.-Mexico border to meet children separated from their parents. She wore a jacket emblazoned with the slogan, “I really don’t care, do U?” that many thought “insensitive at best and callous at worst,” as The Guardian reported.
In “Melania,” her new memoir, Melania Trump expressed her belief that she was sending a “discreet yet impactful” message by wearing the Zara jacket, according to The Guardian. The publication says it obtained an advance copy of the book, which is due to be published next week.
Former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump stand on stage on the last day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 18, 2024. Days after he survived an assassination attempt Trump won formal nomination as the Republican presidential candidate and picked Ohio US Senator J.D. Vance for running mate. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
While critics continue to believe that Melania Trump’s choice of outerwear during her border trip was “unbecoming of her office,” the former first lady said she felt it was necessary to direct a message to the media over its use of anonymous-sourced reporting, The Guardian reported.
Melania Trump, an immigrant herself, said that the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border led to children being housed in squalid, overcrowded detention centers. The traumatic situation for children was “simply unacceptable,” she said, and she told her husband, “This has to stop.”
Meanwhile, Melania Trump also said she was determined to not let “the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border.”
“In fact, I decided to let them know that their criticism would never stop me from doing what I feel is right,” she continued. “To make the point, I wore a particular jacket as I boarded the plane, a jacket that quickly became famous.”
“As the door on the plane closed, my press secretary’s inbox was flooded with urgent emails from top-tier media outlets regarding the jacket,” she also said.
“‘It’s a message for the media,’ I said, ‘to let them know I was unconcerned with their opinions of me.’” But Melania Trump said her press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told her she couldn’t say that and that she shouldn’t have worn the jacket.
“‘Why not? It is the truth,’” Melania Trump said she told Grisham, whom she blames for defying her orders and spreading “misinformation.”
“I disagreed with her insistence that I couldn’t say that,” Melania Trump said. “Ignoring my comments, she told a CNN reporter … that it was simply a jacket, a fashion choice with no underlying message.”
Melania Trump blamed the media for the subsequent controversy that she, in fact, started, saying it “overshadowed the importance of the children, the border, and the policy change” and was “just another example of the media’s irresponsible behavior.”
As The Guardian reported, Stephanie Grisham wrote in her own book that when the two women got back to Washington DC, they were chastised by the Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Grisham, who resigned her job in the Trump administration over Donald and Melania Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, also contradicted the former first lady’s claim that it was her idea to wear the jacket to send a message to the media. Grisham said that Donald Trump came up with that idea. Grisham said the president shouted at her and his wife, “You just tell them you were talking to the (expletive) press.”
Other reporting suggests that Melania Trump had other motives for wearing the jacket. According to her book about first ladies by New York Times reporter Katie Rogers, the jacket episode was part of a four-year “internal power struggle” between Melania Trump and her stepdaughter, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter and senior adviser.
According to Rogers, Melania and Ivanka were “locked in a quiet competition for press coverage,”prompting the first lady to scrutinize every “mention of her name in the press” and to seek ways of boosting coverage.
Melania Trump is certain enjoying plenty of media coverage with the release of her memoir as her president is campaigning to return to the White House. The Daily Beast reported that passages in her book “trash” her husband’s hardline stance on immigration and his efforts to take away women’s abortion rights.
The Slovenian-born former model, who became a U.S. citizen in 2006, apparently wants to make it clear that she sees things very differently from her husband — and right before the election, the Daily Beast also said. Melania Trump has largely been absent from the campaign trail. In her memoir, she said that “occasional political disagreements between me and my husband were a part of our relationship,” The Guardian reported.
On immigration, Melania Trump said in her book, “I am sympathetic to all who wish to find a better life in this country. As an immigrant myself, I intimately understand the necessary if arduous process of legally becoming an American.”
Melania Trump also delivered a passionate defense of abortion rights in her book and in a video posted to social media this week. “Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” the former first lady said in a brief clip, the Daily Beast reported. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?”
