The Trump administration has consistently rolled back the rights for groups ranging from women to immigrants, but this Monday, First Lady Melania Trump wanted us to take her as a credible authority on Martin Luther King Jr. Day anyway. Funnily enough, this public message from the First Lady of the United States on the occasion of this national holiday didn’t even feel very developed at all, as if halfway through the process she and/or her staff realized the hypocrisy. There’s a very simple graphic and, in the caption, no reference at all to the actual substance of what the late civil rights leader in question actually did.
Alongside a simple graphic reading, simply, “MLK Day,” Melania shared:
‘Together we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’
Together we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. #MLKDay pic.twitter.com/Bv6m1ZZtXG
— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) January 20, 2020
And that’s it. No message of freedom, no message of rights, and no mention of protecting marginalized communities made an appearance. It’s fitting, since the Trump administration will be remembered not for the stock market gains Trump loves to tout that only benefit the rich but instead for their violent treatment of asylum seekers and other immigrants who are just trying to secure safety for themselves and their families. The Trump administration has alternated between caging these asylum seekers in gruesome conditions and simply refusing to allow them to come in at all.
So yeah — Melania might as well stay quiet about the ideals that are relevant to MLK Day, because she has not upheld them in the slightest. But we’re not about to get an admission of that from her. In one of her rare television interviews, she called herself “the most bullied person on the world,” which is just outlandishly egocentric.
Check out Twitter’s response to Melania below…
