Welcome to Washington Secrets, where we have not been invited to the Melania premiere or either of its two after parties (I’m not mad, please don’t write that I got mad). But that doesn’t stop us celebrating the most radical first lady in history (disagree? email us at the address below). Today, as a new British ambassador arrives, we also remind you of recent scandals at the grandest diplomatic residence in D.C., and bring you Donald Trump’s familiar homeland security playbook…
The role of first lady has changed little in decades: Simper at one’s husband during the campaign and then, once installed in the White House, pick out the flowers for formal events and run a project based around children, food or both.
Be the nation’s matronly mother.
So you can see why Melania Trump, former model and a reluctant resident of the White House, causes such confusion among Democrats, Republicans and headline writers. She is at times aloof and enigmatic. Unknowable, largely by design.
That changes tonight when a few hundred select guests attend the premiere of Melania the movie at the car lot that was once the Kennedy Center. The rest of us can see her up close when it hits theaters tomorrow.
Brace for the hate. Headlines will focus on how Amazon paid $40 million to license it, plus another $35 million in marketing, and go on to speculate that it is all a Jeff Bezos ploy to woo her husband.
And you can bet that reviews will dismiss it for the way that Melania herself is an executive producer. Never mind that Michael Jordan had total editorial control over the extended Netflix advert that was “The Last Dance” or that Taylor Swift has her own production company for this sort of soft soapery.
First ladies are not supposed to do this kind of thing. They are supposed to introduce their husbands at conventions and play hostess.
But that, Secrets contends, is what makes her by far the most interesting woman to have held the post.
Can you imagine other first ladies breaking so openly with her husband’s policies as Melania has done? In Trump 1.0, she spoke out against the administration’s policy of separating families at the border.
“Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform,” her spokeswoman said.
Soon after she delivered a barbed message to the media by wearing the infamous “I really don’t care, do you?” jacket on a visit to the border.
You can understand the confusion about who she is, can’t you? Especially as she had done it all with the sort of $39 garment at which Jill Biden would have scoffed.
Now, Secrets will blow your minds. Not so long ago, Secrets Sources, who had worked in the first administration, revealed that the first lady had been the driving force behind chunks of foreign policy.
She was so horrified by images of children dying from poison gas attacks in Syria that she persuaded her husband to launch strikes on government forces there.
This time around, she has largely given up on the White House and the social wilderness of Washington altogether, preferring to stay in New York.
Secrets saw her at one of her few White House events, a taskforce on A.I. education, where she talked up the technology’s potential.
“But, as leaders and parents we must manage A.I.’s growth responsibly,” she said in the East Wing. “During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat A.I. as we would our own children—empowering, but with watchful guidance.”
Who else in the administration could fire a shot across the bows of a president intent on tearing down all A.I. regulation?
And then there is the hotline to President Vladimir Putin. As well as designing the Christmas decorations, it turns out that the first lady had established a back channel to the Russian leader in order to free Ukrainian children captured during the war.
Perhaps her critics might be more forgiving if she was a lefty. Democrats are meant to break female molds, perhaps, rather more than conservatives.
Or perhaps if English were her native tongue.
“One of the reasons that she is underestimated by some folks is because she speaks English with a heavy accent,” Katherine Jellison, first lady expert at Ohio University, told me last year.
The result is that, in Secrets’ view, Melania is the most interesting person in the White House. (On those occasions when she doesn’t have somewhere better to be.)
Read more: Trump allies promote Melania documentary
Donald Trump’s homeland security playbook
Historians of Trump 1.0 will recognize how the President is handling the crisis in Minnesota. Having sent Kristi Noem out on a limb to defend Border Patrol officers and blame protester Alex Pretti for “brandishing” a gun during the encounter, he promptly sawed off the branch, suggesting that a full investigation was needed, changing up the personnel overseeing the operation, and leaving his Homeland Security Secretary fighting for her political life.
Think back to that 2019 episode recounted above, when the administration was under fire for separating families at the border. Trump sent out his then Homeland Security Secretary to defend the hardline stance. Her advisers were against it, knowing that she would become the face of the policy.
Sure enough, Kirstjen Nielsen was left high and dry when Trump ended the separation policy two days later.
“Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service….” posted Trump nine months later.
All Eyes on the Brit ambassador
The new British ambassador will be clapped in, as per tradition, at the embassy in Washington today. Sir Christian Turner has plenty on his plate – holding together NATO, defending Greenland, selling a declining power etc. But he arrives during a period of extraordinary diplomatic turnover among the Five Eyes, as America’s closest intelligence allies are known.
New Zealand: Chris Seed replaced Rosemary Banks 13 days ago
Canada: Mark Wiseman replaces Kirsten Hillman next month
Australia: Greg Moriarty replaces Kevin Rudd soon
What does it mean? A readjustment to the Trump order? Who knows?
British officials will be hoping that Turner does better than two of his three most recent predecessors. Lord Peter Mandelson was fired last year when photographs emerged of him lounging in a bathrobe at Jeffrey Epstein’s home. And Lord Kim Darroch was recalled in 2019 after leaked diplomatic cables revealed that he believed Trump to be “insecure” and “incompetent.”
There was also the awkward matter of an investigation into whether Darroch leaked intelligence to his alleged lover (our Tom Rogan had the juice). Michelle Kosinski, then a CNN reporter, always denied any relationship or that he was the source of her scoops.
Lunchtime reading
Is the UAE really a superb ally? The kingdom has too long treated its robust counterterrorism activities as a blank check for anti-American activities in other areas. The UAE remains far too close to China for a privileged American ally. A mix of three active and former U.S. government sources has told the Washington Examiner that the UAE has provided Russia with the identities of U.S. intelligence officers.
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