There must be something about the Christmas season that brings the Melania Trump haters out in force. Between the attacks on her White House decor and her fashion choices, the first lady just never seems to escape them.
After a Washington Post fashion critic trashed Melania for wearing a white coat in the video debuting this year’s Christmas decorations, another columnist with the newspaper argued that the first lady may be seeing “coded messages” through her fashion choices.
In an article published on Thursday, writer Monica Hesse wondered aloud if Melania has attempted to make her fashion “mean something.” She based her argument on an upcoming biography from CNN’s Kate Bennett, titled “Free, Melania.”
“Is Melania Trump sending coded messages, or are we just talking to ourselves?” the story’s headline reads before segueing into gross speculation about Melania’s choice of outfits.
“After years of examining the first lady, for example, Bennett has concluded that there are no sartorial “coincidences” when it comes to Melania. She believes Melania’s suffragist white suits are intentional,” argued Hesse. “Melania’s ‘pussy bow’ blouse, famously worn after the release of President Trump’s leaked ‘Access Hollywood’ footage, was intentional. Pants? Intentional, and potentially chosen to stick it to her husband on occasions when the first couple are arguing: The president prefers women in dresses.”
As to the infamous “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket she wore when leaving to visit migrant children at the southern border, Hesse noted how Bennett’s book argued the move was meant to actually take a stab at Ivanka Trump, of all people.
“The message wasn’t referring to the situation at the border, as Melania’s detractors had accused, nor to negative press coverage, which was the explanation put forth by Melania’s camp,” continued Hesse. “Rather, the jacket was a message for . . . Ivanka Trump? Ivanka is the Zara fan, Bennett argues, and the jacket was Melania’s way of taunting her for trying to take credit for pushing her dad to end family separation.”
While Hesse concedes that this speculation into Melania Trump’s choice of fashion may be an exercise in futility, she nonetheless wants to hope that the first lady is some sort of secret leftist mole in the White House conveying subliminal messages meant to deride her husband — a beacon of hope, if you will.
“I have wondered whether Melania Trump is a genius,” Hesse wrote. “I have wondered whether she’s an idiot. I have wondered why I wonder about her at all. I am grateful this is Kate Bennett’s task, not mine, and Bennett comes down believing that Melania is an independent thinker and a wickedly intelligent operator: pragmatic, confident, warmer than she often appears and excellent with children.”
“I would like Melania Trump to mean something. I would like for her to mean something in the way that we would all like any of this chaotic era to mean anything, because the alternative is that we’re just living in chaos, in a country led by chaotic people.”
As reported by Fox News, Hesse has since been getting mercilessly trolled online. The report follows a previous article from Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan, who said that the first lady’s coat worn during her Christmas video suggested a “cold, dismissive aloofness.”
“The coat looks ridiculous,” said Givhan. “But more than a silly fashion folly, the coat is a distraction. It’s a discomforting affectation taken to a ludicrous extreme. In a video that is intended to celebrate the warmth and welcoming spirit of the holiday season, that simple flourish exudes cold, dismissive aloofness.”
