At a 9/11 memorial event on Friday in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump apparently couldn’t even be bothered to fully recite the Pledge of Allegiance — which is especially ironic considering Donald’s longtime public antagonism towards those who’ve dared to treat the pledge as anything less than basically sacred. Both Donald and Melania were on camera during the Friday recitation of the pledge in Pennsylvania, and while the president seemed to struggle to follow along — as if he’d forgotten the words — Melania didn’t appear to even try.
Check out footage of the debacle below:
Trump doesn't seem to know the words to the Pledge of Allegiance https://t.co/LTQqccPuXC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2020
Again — there’s a lot of irony here in the fact that the president himself has ranted as nauseum about the supposed greatness of the pledge and supposed terribleness of those who’ve treated it as anything less than an occasion to show upstanding allegiance to American nationalism — or something. When professional athletes decided to take a knee during the pledge as a form of peaceful protest to bring attention to issues of racial injustice in the United States, Trump declared that the athletes were “sons of bitches” who should be kicked off the field.
More recently, Trump had a lengthy public meltdown after two meetings held amidst the Democratic National Convention recited the pledge without including the phrase “under God.” His subsequent implication that Democrats as a whole had “removed” the phrase from the pledge was false. Still, at a more recent press conference that he called to mark the announcement of potential future Supreme Court picks, Trump claimed that a Democratic president would place justices on the court who would remove the phrase from the pledge entirely. There is no evidence for this claim.
For her part, Melania has largely stayed out of the spotlight during her time as First Lady. She announced an anti-bullying initiative called “Be Best” at one point, but that never went much of anywhere. More recently, she led a renovation of the Rose Garden — and then after damage from the subsequent Republican National Convention event that was held on the grounds, the sod had to be replaced.
It’s a metaphor https://t.co/0GA97EaizK
— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) September 8, 2020
Check out Twitter reactions to Melania below:
