melania

Did Melania Trump Just Undercut Her Border Visit with a Very Poorly Chosen Jacket?

Her visit to a migrant children’s shelter suggested she cared. Her jacket seemed to say otherwise.
Image may contain Human Person Footwear Shoe Clothing Apparel Flooring Floor Şükrü Sina Gürel and Corridor
By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Melania Trump made a visit Thursday to the Mexican border, where she met with the staff at a detention center for migrant children. On the way there, though, she made what appears to be a fashion faux-pas glaring enough to undo all the good optics. As she got on the plane at the Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, she wore a khaki army-style jacket that, thanks to some sleuthing from the Daily Mail, appears to be a Zara jacket reading, “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” on the back. (One fashion blogger shared the best images of the jacket available online.)

By Andrew Harnik/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

The First Lady changed into a more neutral jacket before her arrival in McAllen, Texas, but the photo-evidence damage was done. The First Lady’s representative, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement, “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message. After today’s important visit to Texas, I hope this isn’t what the media is going to choose to focus on.”

The First Lady’s visit comes the day after President Trump signed an executive order to end the separation of families at the border. Her first stop was at Upbring New Hope Children’s Center in McAllen, where she thanked the staff for their “compassion and kindness” during a difficult time:

X content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

She also asked how she could help the children housed there “reunite with their families as quickly as possible.” According to NBC News, most of the children in the shelter are teenagers. A senior administration official told reporters that the “majority” of children at the shelter had not been separated from their parents by the government, but had arrived in the United States alone.

“She wanted to see everything for herself,” Grisham said earlier in the day. She added that the trip was intended to show support to the families who still remain separated—some estimates say that 2,000 children have been separated from their families, and the executive order signed Wednesday established no plan for reuniting those families. Grisham said that the trip came together within the past two days.

On Wednesday, Trump said it was his wife and oldest daughter, Ivanka, who urged him to end the policy that separated parents.

Over the weekend, Grisham told CNN that “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.” The First Lady did not, however, disagree with her husband’s lie that this policy could only be reversed by Congress, specifically Democrats. As The Washington Post pointed out, these families were being separated because of a “zero-tolerance” policy that the administration enacted in April.

Before Trump made her visit to the border, all four former living First Ladies spoke out against family separation. Laura Bush wrote in a Post op-ed last Sunday that the practice of separating children from her parents “breaks [her] heart.” In the meantime, the current First Lady has been wining and dining the king and queen of Spain.