[imagesource: Getty Images]

In June 2018, Melania Trump headed to Texas to visit a facility where immigrant children, separated from their parents, were being detained.

It’s tough to stand out in a political movement defined by vindictiveness and lack of empathy, but wearing a jacket with the words “I really don’t care, do u?” is a solid effort.

Having been spared criticism from many around the world, who sympathised with a woman who raised a months-old child at the same time that her husband slept with, and then paid off, a pornstar, the tide turned.

At the time, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s communications director, said it was “just a jacket” before her husband took to Twitter to say it was a reference to the “Fake News Media”.

Never mind the kids forcibly separated from their parents, in a policy that physicians now call “torture”, and a Trump administration decision that future generations will look back on as one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies on American soil in recent history.

But hey, let’s hear from Melania’s former friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who is currently punting her new book, Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady.

Stephanie was also Melania’s former senior advisor, so she was privy to certain behind-the-scenes action.

During a recent interview on CNN, she spoke about why Melania wore the jacket, starting from around the one-minute mark:

Because she wanted to be noticed. Cool. An attention-grabbing stunt.

Hang around past 2:30 mark, and you’ll see that viral footage of Melania and Ivanka Trump.

In her book, when talking about the same jacket-wearing uproar, Stephanie said it was essentially because Melania didn’t care.

Below via Glamour:

“I’m driving liberals crazy,” Melania reportedly told Wolkoff, according to her book. “You know what? They deserve it.” Melania supposedly said that people “connect stuff to my clothes,” but she wears what she wears “because I like it.”

“They all went crazy about the zero-tolerance policy at the border. But they don’t know what’s going on. The kids I met were brought in by coyotes, the bad people who are trafficking, and that’s why the kids were put in shelters,” Melania reportedly continued to Wolkoff, per Vanity Fair.

“They’re not with their parents, and it’s sad. But the patrols told me the kids say, ‘Wow, I get a bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?’ It’s more than they have in their own country where they sleep on the floor. They are taking care nicely there. Did Michelle Obama go to the border? She never did. Show me the pictures!”

Look, let’s just say no, children living in cages at the border aren’t delighted to have cabinets for their clothes.

Who knows what sort of legacy Melania will leave behind, but she will forever be remembered for that jacket and the clear message it sent.

[sources:cnn&glamour]