Miranda Devine: Melania Trump ill-served by her handlers
Melania Trump was never given a fair shake by the press - but she may also have her own staffing decisions to blame, writes Miranda Devine.
Opinion
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In annual festive tradition, America’s First Lady Melania Trump was pilloried by the media when she unveiled the White House Christmas decorations this week.
For probably the last time that she will act as the nation’s Yuletide punching bag, fault was found with every glittering bauble and scrap of tinsel.
This time her decorations were labelled “tacky” and reminiscent of a “funeral home”. The trees were “Grinch green”. In previous years she has been accused of creating displays that are alternately “creepy”, “icy”, or a “blood red” nightmare straight out of the Handmaid’s Tale.
In truth her Christmas decor has always been orthodox and elegant.
But serial-Melania-hater, the Washington Post, headlined its latest hit piece: “Everything we needed to know about Melania Trump is in those bewildering Christmas decorations,” before attacking the First Lady personally.
“In a season meant to celebrate family, friends, community and warmth, Melania always appears alone and very, very cold.”
This is only the latest absurd criticism in four years of unrelenting vitriol against Melania. One of the great mysteries of the Trump era has been the missed opportunities for the First Lady to stamp her mark on the White House. With her stylish good looks, straightforward manner, and unique immigrant life story, she should have been a much more popular asset to the administration.
Yet she was woefully misrepresented. It is a measure of the vacuum of the past four years that, despite her impeccable fashion sense, she never appeared on a magazine cover, unlike her predecessors.
None of this is an accident, according to administration loyalists who have been speaking out to protect the First Lady. They say Melania was ill- served by the staffer she trusted most, Stephanie Grisham, who has been with the Trumps since 2015.
Grisham rarely responds to reporters’ questions, apart from a handful of favourites, such as Kate Bennett of CNN and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who paradoxically have run the most caustic stories about the First Family.
She has kept Melania isolated from friends and other White House staff, has alienated potential allies in the media and created drama for the Trumps with a weirdly combative approach. With a better functioning, less reactive press operation, the First Lady would have found a more forgiving media.
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