Caffeinated Politics

The latest insult to American women came from Donald Trump’s third wife. Melania Trump, who emphasized her experience as a “working mom” while serving as First Lady. It pays not to eat food and read the newspaper at the same time. Surely more than one person nearly choked when reading the Op-Ed column supposedly written by Melania, which contained gems like this one.

I constantly challenge myself, as first lady, to think beyond the traditional responsibilities of the East Wing.

Yes, we all can understand the daunting responsibilities that fall on Melaina’s shoulders. We are so sorry she has such an uphill path in life to trod. Give me a break!

Let’s be honest, the only incline she ever took in life was the soul-crushing climb up into Donald Trump’s bed. There is no way for her to personally speak about mastering a “balancing act,” given that she married a wealthy orange real estate mogul and, as a result, didn’t have to work while rearing Barron. She could have worked to find a divorce lawyer mere weeks after the child was born when Donald paid for sex with a porn actress. But that would have taken effort.

What rankles people is when the richest, like Melania, discover their “working‑parent identity” the same way they discover a new boutique fitness class. They would not have to pay to stay thin if they had to sprint across a parking lot because daycare closes at 5:30 SHARP. I can see Melania writing the column. There is the solemn nod, the furrowed brow, ( I hope the wrinkles don’t persist), the need to word it so that readers will grasp that she “really understands” what everyday families go through. Never mind, she was likely wearing her $4,000 blazer as she pondered how to connect with the ‘regular folks’.

When Melaina insists she knows the grind, it lands with the same sincerity as a trust‑fund guy claiming he “built his own brand from nothing.” Like he never said, “My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars.”

Meanwhile, actual working parents, you know them from almost any community, don’t have the luxury of pretending. They are ones juggling two part‑time jobs, a school pickup schedule seemingly engineered by a sadist, and a checking account that whimpers every time the price of gasoline ticks upward. They’re calculating whether they can afford health insurance this month, whether the car will make it another winter, and whether they can slip out of work early enough to catch the last five minutes of their kid’s band concert without getting written up. Their lives are a constant negotiation between necessity and exhaustion. They are not trying to craft an anecdote from a penthouse suite to approximate the reality that most Americans can attest to every day.

It is a complete joke when a super‑rich figure tries to pass herself off as “just another parent doing her best.” It reeks. The distance from her penthouse to reality of life for a large segment of Americans borders on pure arrogance. It’s the gulf between someone who worries about whether their private jet crew is fully staffed and someone who worries about whether they can afford new shoes for their kid before the next growth spurt.

I get it that Melaina wants to be relatable. Nancy Reagan desired that very thing from the country, too. She had to wait until Ronald entered his years of full-blown Alzheimer’s. So, if Melania can hang on for a little longer, given how Trump has lapsed mentally in the past year, she will not need to imitate the grit of the people in an Op-Ed column.