In a surprising moment of television, someone finally got away with criticizing Donald Trump without Trump screaming back at them or blaming someone else for his problems. It may help that his critic is married to him. Melania Trump, in a Monday interview with Sean Hannity, said one way the Republican frontrunner could act a little more presidential would be to "stay away from retweets," a comment that drew laughter from the live audience and even from her husband, whose hands are perfectly normal-sized, don't you forget it.
Hannity set up the bit with inevitable Hannityesque charm, noting, "My wife gives me great advice in my life. Right, guys, we know what that's like, we get our best advice from our wife?" Ah, the little woman. What would we be without her civilizing influence, huh? If only she didn't spend all our money shoe shopping, right, fellas? But what advice does Melania have for Donald?
"Well, I sometimes I feel that the retweets, sometimes get him in trouble," she said. "So just I said, 'Stay away from, you know, stay away from retweets.'"
"She does say that," the GOP frontrunner chimed in.
"And, you know, if he would only listen. You know? I could map every day and every time. But, you know, he's doing great," she told Hannity.
[wonkbar]a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/donald-trump-rules-out-banging-ted-cruzs-uggo-wife-ew-yuck"[/wonkbar]The comment was clearly aimed at Trump's recent retweet of an image comparing the beeyootiful Melania Trump with the uggo Heidi Cruz, along with several other ill-advised retweets, like the two times Trump has retweeted thoughtful expressions of support from an account called "WhiteGenocideTM." Or Trump's retweet ofbogus crime statistics suggesting blacks commit all the crimes in America -- on that one, Trump proclaimed to Bill O'Reilly it wasn't his responsibility to check the accuracy of every little factoid he retweets:
Trump: Hey, Bill, Bill, am I gonna check every statistic? I get millions and millions of people, @RealDonaldTrump, by the way.
O’Reilly: You gotta, you’re a presidential contender, you gotta check ‘em.
Trump: I have millions of people … You know what? Fine. But this came out of radio shows and everything else.
O’Reilly: Oh, come on, radio shows?!
Trump: All it was is a retweet. And it wasn’t from me. It came out of a radio show, and other places.
So, yeah, not knowing what the fuck you're talking about is presumably one of those "not presidential" things he may want to work on.
[wonkbar]a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/donald-trump-loves-this-freakin-video-cause-its-the-best-freakin-video"[/wonkbar]Melania Trump had no comment, however, on that totally kick-ass videogame ripoff video Trump retweeted Monday, which was the coolest, noisiest possible celebration of a Trump presidency possible, except for how it was making fun of Trump and the Martin Sheen voiceover in the videogame was actually the game's racist villain, not a good guy. But damn, it looked GREAT!
As for being "more presidential," The Hill reminds us Trump isn't so big on the idea anyway:
Trump has repeatedly said that his wife urges him to act "more presidential." During a rally in Wisconsin on Monday, Trump suggested it'd be "boring as hell" if he acted more presidential, suggesting he'd have smaller crowd sizes and saying, "Let me be unpresidential just for a little while longer."
Time to start tweeting more Mussolini quotesto @RealDonaldTrump, we guess!
[ TPM / The Hill / Factcheck.org / Gawker ]
I've noticed that myself - happens to me ALL THE BLOODY TIME. It's all I can do to nod and smile - the alternative seems likely to garner the attention of chaps in uniform, and I am allergic to paperwork.
I dunno about Preznidental, but he'd make a perfectly good red state senator.