Her husband might be the world's most famous troll, but Melania Trump seems to have acquired a knack for it herself. As clips from her exclusive interview with ABC News' Tom Llamas roll out prior to their Friday night broadcast, the first lady seems intent on combating an overheated media with pure, calculated nonchalance.
When pressed about President Trump's affair with Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress turned activist, Mrs. Trump could have denied reality or she could have pulled a Hillary Clinton and publicly declared she forgives Trump so everyone should move on. Instead, flipping a lock of hair with a perfectly manicured finger and the hint of laughter in her eyes, she took a third, decidedly Trumpian, approach to the matter.
"It is not a concern of focus of mine," said Trump. "I'm a mother and first lady and I have much more important things to think about and do."
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As a point of contrast, when Llamas asked her about her spokeswoman's rebuff of Rudy Giuliani's defense of the president, Trump responded with far more indignation.
"I never talked to Mr. Giuliani," said Trump, denying that she ever told him that she doesn't believe her husband ever had an affair with the president. As to why he declared that, "You have to ask him."
It's quite a feat. She refused to concede that the affair happened without cornering herself into lying. Where the president sometimes falters and huffs and puffs with the press, she stayed calm. And why shouldn't she? The "Resistance" will decry her complicit white womanhood regardless of what she says or does.
The media continually rake her over the coals for wearing perfectly standard Manolos on a tarmac, her accent, and her past career as a model. She has no reason to care at all what they have to say anymore and ever reason to troll them into insanity. As Daniels' attorney and 2020 hopeful Michael Avenatti carves out a permanent seat on CNN, Melania expertly refused to include the president's throwaway paramour in her narrative.
"I could say I'm the most bullied person in the world," Trump later told Llamas. She's fully aware of the irony. She's taken to critiquing media attention to her attire while she dresses in menswear in some of the most patriarchal regions in the world. In similar fashion, she turns the media's complaints against them.
She's certainly no idiot, just a world-class troll.