When I saw this picture I had to laugh. The women look great and everyone's behaving themselves but I wonder. Are the royals getting tired of having to socialize with the Trumps? Notice that Camilla is the only one who apparently feels the need for a bracing glass of wine. Donald doesn't drink alcohol and it's possible that Melania doesn't either, but I assume she would have been offered a glass of sparkling water or something similar. Fascinating.
photo from CNN.com
And what about the ambassador's wife? She and the First Lady have similar life stories. Both are eastern European immigrants, now serving as trophy wives to men decades older than themselves. More interestingly, it turns out this is a reunion of sorts. Suzanne and Melania have been BFF's for years, as reported by the Belfast Telegraph in an article dated July 13, 2018:
Ever since Suzanne, born Suzanne Ircha, and Melania sat at the apex of New York society, when even the idea of Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office was still (very) far-fetched, their star-crossed Louboutins seemed destined to align.
Suzanne describes Woody Johnson as a 'Prince Charming', but both women are proud hard-grafters plucked by billionaires from semi-obscurity.
Suzanne was born the daughter of a first-generation Ukrainian immigrant father and a second-generation Ukrainian-American mother and grew up in Manhattan's Little Ukraine in the East Village. A former equity sales manager and actress, her TV credits include an appearance as an extra in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series.
Melania Knauss, meanwhile, moved to Manhattan from Slovenia in 1996, taking modelling jobs around the city and meeting Trump, then a real-estate mogul, two years later at a New York Fashion Week party.
Both wives are much younger than their husbands: there's a 20-year age difference between Johnson (70) and Suzanne (50), while Trump is 72 and Melania 48.
Their other halves have been friends for more than 30 years and it was their respective marriages that brought their wives together (Trump's third, Johnson's second). (Read the article here.)
And what about the ambassador's wife? She and the First Lady have similar life stories. Both are eastern European immigrants, now serving as trophy wives to men decades older than themselves. More interestingly, it turns out this is a reunion of sorts. Suzanne and Melania have been BFF's for years, as reported by the Belfast Telegraph in an article dated July 13, 2018:
Ever since Suzanne, born Suzanne Ircha, and Melania sat at the apex of New York society, when even the idea of Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office was still (very) far-fetched, their star-crossed Louboutins seemed destined to align.
Suzanne describes Woody Johnson as a 'Prince Charming', but both women are proud hard-grafters plucked by billionaires from semi-obscurity.
Suzanne was born the daughter of a first-generation Ukrainian immigrant father and a second-generation Ukrainian-American mother and grew up in Manhattan's Little Ukraine in the East Village. A former equity sales manager and actress, her TV credits include an appearance as an extra in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series.
Melania Knauss, meanwhile, moved to Manhattan from Slovenia in 1996, taking modelling jobs around the city and meeting Trump, then a real-estate mogul, two years later at a New York Fashion Week party.
Both wives are much younger than their husbands: there's a 20-year age difference between Johnson (70) and Suzanne (50), while Trump is 72 and Melania 48.
Their other halves have been friends for more than 30 years and it was their respective marriages that brought their wives together (Trump's third, Johnson's second). (Read the article here.)
Here's how IMDB describes the former actress:
Correction: Suzanne Ircha was born in the U.S.; her father and maternal grandparents immigrated from Ukraine. As I proofed this post I noticed that the newspaper article and the IMDB blurb use the exact same language, which I've highlighted in blue. I don't see any citations so I'm not sure who wrote it first and who cut-and-pasted.
Update on Thursday morning. In an article titled "Trump's catastrophic fashion choices in England were not just a sign of bad taste," Robin Givhan, fashion reporter at the Washington Post, weighs in on Donald and Melania's attire during the visit. No surprise, she's firmly in the "What was he thinking?" camp concerning Donald's white tie:
Fashion is diplomacy, and so what did this wardrobe say?
For any man to bungle white-tie dress — something so regimented, so steeped in tradition, so well-documented — he must be a man who doesn’t bother with the details, who doesn’t avail himself of ready expertise, who refuses to be a student of history or even of Google. White-tie attire is more science than art. The fit of the tailcoat is just so. Great flapping yards of the white waistcoat are not meant to hang below the jacket. The sleeves should not stretch to the base of the thumb. The jacket is not to be buttoned. And so on. White tie is fact-based. One cannot fudge it. One does not make white-tie decisions based on one’s gut, lest one end up with the gut overly exposed.
photo credit: Doug Mills/AFP/Getty Images
Melania gets higher marks:
photo credit: Toby Melville/Reuters
Read the entire article here.
Update #2 on Friday morning. They're back and wow, Melania in a babushka is a look we haven't seen before:
Update #2 on Friday morning. They're back and wow, Melania in a babushka is a look we haven't seen before:
when you wake up and you just don't want to deal with your hair pic.twitter.com/gNkMWuSCNt— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) June 7, 2019
We have seen that look somewhere else:
Maybe the Trumps really are trying to brand themselves as American royalty.
Update #2. Kate Bennett had the same thought:
Correction on Saturday morning: The picture of Melania in a headscarf was taken as they arrived in Ireland, not upon arrival back in Washington.
Update #3 on Friday afternoon. More about branding and the Trumps trying to position themselves as royalty, from Molly Jong-Fast writing at The Bulwark.com. This is the article in its entirety and note that Molly is Erika Jong's daughter:
This week the Trump kids went royal in the hopes of laundering their brand and enjoying some of the fruits of their father’s high office. We should have known that the president who made up a fake coat of arms would be all too happy to bring along his four adult children to hobnob with what he considers to be their British counterparts.
But as royal families go, the Trumps aren’t the Windsors. Or the Bushes. Or the Kennedys. Or the Kardashians, even. The Trumps are more like the Habsburgs [sic]—at least where their facial structure is concerned.
And while it might be normal to bring teenage children on state visits—the Obamas did it occasionally—bringing four adult children, two of whom run the president’s completely separate business (wink wink), on the taxpayers’ dime is a different story. Many of us were puzzled as to what assistance Eric Trump was offering in the way of international diplomacy.
Fortunately, we had Chris Ruddy to explain it all for us.
“This is a president that loves brands,” Ruddy told the BBC. “The Queen has the greatest brand in the world, doesn’t she? I think he is just super impressed by that.” It’s amazing to think that there are people in the world who think of the Queen of England as a “brand.” Though perhaps not more amazing to think that a man like Ruddy could be friends with the president of the United States.
But on the other hand, Ruddy is almost certainly correct. Trump does love brands. Even more than he loves “young, beautiful pieces of ass.” (Probably.) So, it would make sense that he and his progeny would want to get themselves in on the “royal brand.”
The great irony here, of course, is that the royals themselves are trying to modernize their “brand” and skew a little less Marie Antoinette for obvious reasons. But let’s leave that to the side for a moment.
As the New York Times reported “unlike the royals, who wage an endless battle to keep Britain’s voracious tabloids at arm’s length, the Trump children shared behind-the-scenes photographs and tweets of their trip.”
In a way, you have to feel sorry for the British royals. Here they are trying to move away from the public image of being feckless dilettantes and in come the four Trump kids (and their spouses!) snapping away with their phones, tweeting and Instagramming and generally making sure that the world knows that they are totes living their best lives.
#Blessed!
Yet while it’s not normal for American presidents to bring their adult children on state visits, Town & Country helpfully pointed out that the presidents of Columbia and Mexico brought their adult children on state visits to the United Kingdom before.
How wonderful it is to realize that Trump was merely following the example set by . . . Mexico.
As someone who has benefited from the elderly, toothless prostitute that is nepotism, I understand people’s disdain towards it.
After all America is supposed to be a democracy where everyone from tech billionaires with blood boys to tech billionaires with blood girls has an equal chance to make it. But President Trump takes a less egalitarian approach.
Almost his entire fortune was transferred to him, wholesale, by his father. (Despite making all the best deals, Trump would have more money today if he had simply plopped his father’s money in an index fund.) And now, the president wants to set his kids up to take over: In an interview with the Sun, he said he hoped that his kids could hold a “next generation” meeting with Princes William and Harry.
If you think about it, though, it’s actually surprising that it took more than two years for Princess Ivanka and Prince junior to make their move on the British royal family. It only seems natural. After all, the British royals are just national figureheads while the Trump kids are both brand ambassadors and high-ranking members of the American government. The royal family couldn’t even touch the Brexit debate in public. But the Trump kids are going to help reelect the 45th president of the United States!
The real question, then, isn’t whether or not Trump wants one of his children to be the 46th president, but which one he’ll end up tapping for the job. Because unlike with the British royalty, he’s not bound to give the throne to Don Jr. Maybe it’ll be Ivanka, because she’s so strong with women! Maybe it’ll be Tiffany, because her dad kind of owes her!
Maybe it’ll be Eric, because that would be amazing.
Whatever happens five years from now, I like to imagine that when the Queen was introduced to the Trump family, she thought to herself, When America sends its people, they’re not sending their best, are they?
Maybe the Trumps really are trying to brand themselves as American royalty.
Update #2. Kate Bennett had the same thought:
Goes to Buckingham Palace once. pic.twitter.com/fQMIaD3WOn— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) June 7, 2019
Correction on Saturday morning: The picture of Melania in a headscarf was taken as they arrived in Ireland, not upon arrival back in Washington.
Update #3 on Friday afternoon. More about branding and the Trumps trying to position themselves as royalty, from Molly Jong-Fast writing at The Bulwark.com. This is the article in its entirety and note that Molly is Erika Jong's daughter:
This week the Trump kids went royal in the hopes of laundering their brand and enjoying some of the fruits of their father’s high office. We should have known that the president who made up a fake coat of arms would be all too happy to bring along his four adult children to hobnob with what he considers to be their British counterparts.
But as royal families go, the Trumps aren’t the Windsors. Or the Bushes. Or the Kennedys. Or the Kardashians, even. The Trumps are more like the Habsburgs [sic]—at least where their facial structure is concerned.
And while it might be normal to bring teenage children on state visits—the Obamas did it occasionally—bringing four adult children, two of whom run the president’s completely separate business (wink wink), on the taxpayers’ dime is a different story. Many of us were puzzled as to what assistance Eric Trump was offering in the way of international diplomacy.
Fortunately, we had Chris Ruddy to explain it all for us.
“This is a president that loves brands,” Ruddy told the BBC. “The Queen has the greatest brand in the world, doesn’t she? I think he is just super impressed by that.” It’s amazing to think that there are people in the world who think of the Queen of England as a “brand.” Though perhaps not more amazing to think that a man like Ruddy could be friends with the president of the United States.
But on the other hand, Ruddy is almost certainly correct. Trump does love brands. Even more than he loves “young, beautiful pieces of ass.” (Probably.) So, it would make sense that he and his progeny would want to get themselves in on the “royal brand.”
The great irony here, of course, is that the royals themselves are trying to modernize their “brand” and skew a little less Marie Antoinette for obvious reasons. But let’s leave that to the side for a moment.
As the New York Times reported “unlike the royals, who wage an endless battle to keep Britain’s voracious tabloids at arm’s length, the Trump children shared behind-the-scenes photographs and tweets of their trip.”
In a way, you have to feel sorry for the British royals. Here they are trying to move away from the public image of being feckless dilettantes and in come the four Trump kids (and their spouses!) snapping away with their phones, tweeting and Instagramming and generally making sure that the world knows that they are totes living their best lives.
#Blessed!
Yet while it’s not normal for American presidents to bring their adult children on state visits, Town & Country helpfully pointed out that the presidents of Columbia and Mexico brought their adult children on state visits to the United Kingdom before.
How wonderful it is to realize that Trump was merely following the example set by . . . Mexico.
As someone who has benefited from the elderly, toothless prostitute that is nepotism, I understand people’s disdain towards it.
After all America is supposed to be a democracy where everyone from tech billionaires with blood boys to tech billionaires with blood girls has an equal chance to make it. But President Trump takes a less egalitarian approach.
Almost his entire fortune was transferred to him, wholesale, by his father. (Despite making all the best deals, Trump would have more money today if he had simply plopped his father’s money in an index fund.) And now, the president wants to set his kids up to take over: In an interview with the Sun, he said he hoped that his kids could hold a “next generation” meeting with Princes William and Harry.
If you think about it, though, it’s actually surprising that it took more than two years for Princess Ivanka and Prince junior to make their move on the British royal family. It only seems natural. After all, the British royals are just national figureheads while the Trump kids are both brand ambassadors and high-ranking members of the American government. The royal family couldn’t even touch the Brexit debate in public. But the Trump kids are going to help reelect the 45th president of the United States!
The real question, then, isn’t whether or not Trump wants one of his children to be the 46th president, but which one he’ll end up tapping for the job. Because unlike with the British royalty, he’s not bound to give the throne to Don Jr. Maybe it’ll be Ivanka, because she’s so strong with women! Maybe it’ll be Tiffany, because her dad kind of owes her!
Maybe it’ll be Eric, because that would be amazing.
Whatever happens five years from now, I like to imagine that when the Queen was introduced to the Trump family, she thought to herself, When America sends its people, they’re not sending their best, are they?
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