MELANIA Trump left Washington — and her husband’s shadow —on Monday for a four-country tour of Africa that will give the glamorous and at times enigmatic first lady a chance to carve her own diplomatic path.
The trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt, which sees her returning to Washington early on October 7, will be her first big, solo international trip. She boarded her plane late on Monday from Andrews Air Force base.
Unlike her popular predecessor Michelle Obama, former fashion model Melania Trump has kept largely to the background as US President Donald Trump alternately wows and dismays in a presidency he has turned into the biggest show on earth.
Spokesperson Stephanie Grisham said Melania’s Africa tour will be a ‘diplomatic and humanitarian visit’ focused on her #BeBest campaign for ‘children and their well-being.’
There was little other information available about the trip, with only hours to go.
In typical fashion, it was Donald who seized the headlines, telling journalists last week that his wife was ‘making a big trip to Africa. We both love Africa. Africa is so beautiful, the most beautiful part of the world, in many ways,’ continued the president, who was once reported to have dismissed the continent as a collection of ‘shithole countries’.
But even if Donald stole her thunder, there’s no doubt that Melania means to take ownership of the visit. At a time when her husband’s government is pushing for radical reductions of US aid around the world, Melania will ‘showcase’ the work of the huge US Agency for International Development (USAID), Grisham said. ‘This is her trip, her initiative.’
She cares
Melania held a #BeBest event at the UN last week, during the world body’s annual gathering. However, the first lady has been more noted for her absences during a hectic presidency in which her husband is almost omnipresent on social media, ‘We haven’t seen a sign that she is willing to embrace being a political asset,’ said Anita McBride, a former chief of staff for Laura Bush. ‘The ability and the opportunity is there. Whether she chooses to use it will be another question.’
Even what was arguably Melania’s most memorable public appearance came wrapped in mystery and controversy, yet again raising the question of what kind of first lady occupies this controversy-filled White House. It was June and her husband’s policy of discouraging illegal immigration by separating children from their parents at the Mexican border had turned into a political firestorm.
Melania made a surprise visit to Texas to visit some of the children, and even more unexpectedly the back of her jacket bore these words scrawled in white: ‘I really don’t care. Do U?’
No one knew what she meant.
‘She’s a woman of few words,’ McBride said. ‘The one exception is when she wore that jacket. I will never understand that,’ she told Reuters.
But with the Africa trip, it seems clear what the first lady wants to show: she does care.
1 Comment
It’s rather saddening that the husband could call Africa a shithole continent and now the First Lady is out there with the “s-h” people. God bless Africa