‘A Speech of Self-Defense’
The thoughts and opinions about Melania Trump’s surprising Epstein remarks
Just as the media fervor around the Jeffrey Epstein files and the high-powered people mentioned in them started quieting down, Melania Trump’s surprising remarks from the White House Thursday demanding that lies linking her to Epstein stop fueled more discussion across news outlets and social media asking “Why now?”
The closest explanation Mrs. Trump provided in her nearly six-minute speech yesterday distancing herself from Epstein was her claim about lies tying her to the American financier and sex offender who died in 2019 by suicide while in custody awaiting trial. The first lady also expressed in her remarks that she was never friends with Epstein or his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 and is serving 20 years prison.
In her remarks on Thursday she said, “Numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been circulating on social media for years now. Be cautious what you believe. These images and stories are completely false.”
And while the fake images Mrs. Trump refers to have been in existence for a while, their lingering presence may have finally hit a tipping point for the first lady, who also championed the Take It Down Act, legislation that snagged its first prosecution this week.
On Friday, Marc Beckman, a senior advisor to Mrs. Trump, explained on FOX News why the first lady spoke out, saying she’d had “enough,” and wanted to clear her name and set the record straight.
“First, enough is enough,” Beckman said on FOX. “This has been ongoing, and it’s time for the public to refocus their attention on what achievements our first lady has done.”
Beckman went on to say the first lady in her remarks on Thursday “debunked all of the lies surrounding her and Epstein.” And, he added that by calling on Congress to hold public hearings for survivors of Epstein’s crimes who wish to testify, Mrs. Trump showed her support of the survivors.
Others had mixed reactions to the first lady’s speech.
“Melania Trump was certainly trying to protect her legacy and reputation,” Tammy Vigil, associate professor in the College of Communication at Boston University and author of the 2019 book Melania & Michelle: First Ladies in a New Era, told East Wing Magazine in an email. “It is not uncommon for first ladies to try to protect themselves when put into challenging situations.”
However, in an opinion piece for MS Now, Paul Waldman described Mrs. Trump’s attempt to smolder what she called “false smears” ended up igniting the opposite.
“If there were a Streisand Effect Hall of Fame, commemorating those who call attention to things they would much prefer people ignore, first lady Melania Trump would have earned her induction on Thursday afternoon,” he wrote.
Presidential spouses are not often attached directly to sex scandals, though there are plenty of examples where they are asked to explain or defend unsavory behavior by their spouses, Vigil said. One example was when then-First Lady Hillary Clinton supported her husband Bill Clinton during his “literal and figurative” trials regarding his various sex scandals starting with Gennifer Flowers and later with Monica Lewinski.
Alternatively, while some social media commentators suggested Mrs. Trump’s remarks may have been deployed as a distraction from the war with Iran, Vigil sees it as a departure from how first ladies have ordinarily been used to support and bolster their husbands.
“What Melania Trump did might be considered the opposite,” Vigil says. “Her announcement yesterday was clearly about her saving face publicly by defending and explaining her past while drawing a lot of renewed attention to an issue her husband appears to be desperately trying to get the media and the public to ignore.”
When President Trump was asked about his wife’s remarks later on Thursday he told MS Now that he did not “know anything about” his wife’s statement. However, an unidentified source told CNN that the president “was aware” that the first lady planned to make a statement.
If the president was unaware, the potential lack of coordination between their staffs would demonstrate Mrs. Trump’s “independence from him and her willingness to contravene his wishes and desires,” Vigil said, noting that past first ladies have shown their independence in different ways.
Betty Ford, for instance, had a fondness for speaking her mind and defending her personal perspectives regardless of the impact on Gerald Ford, according to Vigil. Mrs. Ford’s independence at one point resulted in Republicans calling for her to be removed from the White House, Vigil said, although that didn’t happen.
“We have seen Melania Trump defy her husband in the past, though never quite in this big of a fashion,” Vigil said. “Her refusal to hold his hand at public events was a minor example. Her joining the other living first ladies in protest of the separation of children from their families at the border is a bigger one.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the policy of separating children from their families at the border, for Vigil, was also reminiscent of Melania Trump’s decision to wear the infamous green jacket with the words “I really don’t care. Do You?” written on the back.
“On her trip to the border back then, she and her staff let the president override and change her message management during the controversy that followed,” Vigil said. “So far, there is no evidence of Mrs. Trump backing down or adapting her messaging regarding a call for public Epstein hearings.”
The first lady’s true motivation for her remarks may never be known.
But, Waldman made some valid points when he wrote: “If Melania Trump wants to become a real advocate for Epstein’s victims, that would be great. She has her own bully pulpit, and she could shame congressional Republicans into giving victims the forum they deserve. But it doesn’t seem to be the horrors of Epstein’s crimes that led her to speak out now, years after his death and Maxwell’s conviction; the first point Melania Trump made Thursday pushed back against the notion that she was somehow implicated in the scandal.”
However Mrs. Trump’s statement about Epstein is regarded now, it will certainly be worth scholarly attention in the future.
Vigil describes it as a rare but important example of a first lady engaging in what scholars call a “speech of apologia” or a speech of self-defense. Even rarer, she said, is how Melania Trump spoke for herself rather than as a surrogate for her husband.
“Whether partisan interpretations of the content regard the content as reliable or not, the fact that she gave such a speech and particularly without presidential approval or vetting is consequential,” Vigil said. “It underscores the potential for first ladies to be autonomous actors even within the confines of the relationally-dependent public role.”
The Weekly Wrap
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