On Tuesday, former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman’s new book Unhinged comes out. In the days preceding the release, a number of news outlets got their hands on some of the material, which led to the circulation of some pretty radical claims. Newsweek now has another one — that Melania Trump is eager to divorce her husband and in the meantime, uses her fashion choices to “punish him.”
To be clear, these are just Omarosa’s beliefs. While she continues to aim to make her mark with her book, large numbers of Americans face crises thanks to Donald Trump’s trade policies. His tariffs have threatened tens of thousands of jobs and have already sucked large amounts of cash out of the American economy.
Omarosa, though, has a book to sell.
She claims:
‘In my opinion, Melania is counting every minute until he is out of office and she can divorce him.’
It’s not immediately clear why she can’t just divorce him now if she’s so eager to. Does she just really like being the first lady? If she does, it doesn’t seem like it. She’s hardly done anything besides occasionally recycle Obama-era talking points.
In other words, Omarosa’s attempt to cast herself as some sort of resistance darling — or something — isn’t exactly poised to stick.
She’s certainly not deterred, though.
As mentioned, she also claims in Unhinged that Melania uses her fashion choices to “punish” the president. Omarosa’s reasoning is that Melania’s attention-grabbing attire choices in connection to high profile moments of her husband’s administration have to have some kind of ulterior motive behind them.
Melania might just be on board with her husband’s radicalism, though, and the fashion might be just that — fashion, period. Although she’s not normally very vocal about her positions, she has supported things like her husband’s efforts to cast doubt on whether Barack Obama was born in the U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSTx1ZODEcQ
These factors don’t seem to have affected Omarosa’s perspective.
In Unhinged, she writes:
‘Taken as a whole, all of her style rebellions have served the same purpose, and not only misdirection and distraction—strategies her husband knows all too well. I believe Melania uses style to punish her husband.’
Omarosa’s examples of Melania’s “style rebellions” include the “Gucci ‘pussy bow’ pink blouse” she wore to a 2016 presidential debate and the “I Really Don’t Care — Do U?” jacket she wore while visiting an immigrant detention center. (The blouse attracted attention because she wore it shortly after a tape came out of her husband boasting of sexually assaulting women.)
In the end, though, Melania might just be really bad at maintaining a public image that doesn’t attract scrutiny. The jacket she wore to the detention center certainly did; it made its appearance right in the middle of the controversy over the Trump administration’s separation and detention of thousands of immigrant children.
The true explanation for that jacket might just be, though, that she doesn’t care and couldn’t be bothered to think about the implications of her fashion choices. While Omarosa keeps running around the cable news circuit with her wild claims, the Trumps keep digging into their bubble, walled off from reality and ignoring the real world consequences of their actions.
Featured Image via YouTube Screenshot
