Here she is meeting with workers
Touring the center . . .
Unfortunately, she stepped on her message a bit by wearing a jacket on the way out that read on the back, “I really don’t care, do U?” I gather it’s some fashionable thing. Honestly, it’s someone’s job to make sure she doesn’t do that.
Uh oh. Looks like she’s getting involved in policy. That might not be good.
Unless this is basically a “Message: We care” photo op. But I don’t think Melania does much to smooth Donald’s rough edges, people already differentiate her from the president, unlike Ivanka, who kind of shares the rap against her dad’s.
And she’ll wear the wrong kind of shoes and get attacked anyway unless she personally unlocks the cages and releases everyone.
From the White House:
First Lady Melania Trump has arrived in Texas to take part in briefings and tours at a nonprofit social services center for children who have entered the United States illegally and a customs and border patrol processing center. Her goals are to thank law enforcement and social services providers for their hard work, lend support and hear more on how the administration can build upon the already existing efforts to reunite children with their families.
Former First Lady Laura Bush joined in the attack on President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which results in the separation of children from their parents who have entered the country illegally.
Mrs. Bush wrote in the Washington Post:
I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.
Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.
Okay, well at least Mrs. Bush didn’t use the “C” word.
Meantime, the current first lady issued a statement through her spokesman that subtly, but pretty clearly, puts her on the side of her husband’s critics:
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.
That is, the current policy is heartless.
President Trump today said First Lady Melania Trump’s recent surgery for a reportedly benign kidney condition lasted nearly four hours.
Trump made the comments at the White House before leaving for the G7 meeting in Quebec, explaining why she wasn’t going with him.
“She wanted to go. Can’t fly for one month, the doctors say. She had a big operation. That was close to a four hour operation. She’s doing great,” Trump said.
President Trump this afternoon spent more than an hour visiting with Melania after she underwent an embolization at Walter Reed medical center for what the White House is terming a benign kidney condition.
The surgery was successful, according to the White House, but Melania will have to remain in the hospital the rest of hte week. There were few details, but the Daily Beast has a good take on what might be going on:
“In this procedure, an interventional radiologist uses imaging guidance to insert a catheter into a primary artery and advance it to blood vessel leading to a tumor or other area where the blood supply needs to be blocked,” the organization’s website says. “Special substances which clot and form a blockage are then injected.”
While the particulars of Melania Trump’s kidney condition aren’t yet known, Dr. Mohamad Allaf, the director of Minimally Invasive and Robotic Urological Surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, said patients most commonly undergo the procedure if they have “a benign kidney tumor, a growth in the kidney.”
“The most common benign tumor of the kidney is something called a angiomyolipoma,” he explained. “Angio meaning blood vessel, myo meaning muscle, lipoma meaning fat.”
But he added that angiomyolipoma is not common for men or women Trump’s age. “It would be a rare kidney condition,” Allaf said . . .
Allaf found it curious that Trump’s procedure required such a lengthy hospital stay, describing it as “atypical.”
“It is typically an outpatient procedure. People would get embolized and go home the same day or night,” he explained. “In the press release, it said she would be out for the rest of the week, and we’re on Monday. So to me, that implies that either the situation is a little bit more complex or perhaps, if it is an aneurysm or a tumor or a growth, it’s either complex or large.”
This doctor who appeared on Fox was not particularly surprised she would stay in the hospital.
First Lady Melania Trump is being criticized for taking on cyberbullying even while her husband avidly engages in it. And I get that, he ain’t the best role model for kids when it comes to that, or several other things.
But in fact, her campaign, which she announced Monday in the Rose Garden, goes well beyond that issue to a broader effort to help kids including, she says, “well-being, social media use and opioid abuse.”
“Let us teach our children the difference between right and wrong, and encourage them to ‘be best’ in their individual paths in life,” she said. “We can and should teach children the importance of social and self-awareness, positive relationship skills and responsible decisionmaking.” Kids, she said, need to learn “positive behaviors” online, and she added that she will be talking with social media executives about ways to accomplish this.
I certainly agree with all this, though it sounds so broad and general to be in danger of becoming meaningless. She might do better to focus on one specific issue. Or, given Ronald Reagan’s old joke – “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help” – nothing at all.
Cyberbullying is only part of the online problem. Kids see and do the most awful things you can imagine on social media, with video games, and online generally. I’m talking, of course, about extreme violence and sex. This is not easy to mitigate. Kids are like a leaking dike, you plug up one hole and another opens up. They find a way to the bad stuff, which naturally fascinates them.
“When children learn positive online behaviors early on, social media can be used in productive ways and can affect positive change,” she said.
I’m not so sure. Probably the smart thing to do is to just keep devices out of kids hands until they’re about 16. But of course, Bill Gates and the rest of the high-tech crowd are making sure that every kid has to have a tablet in school to “enhance learning.” And profits.
Funny how ever since I was a kid the government and experts have been exploring ways to enhance learning, and the public schools are as bad as ever. Talking about fixing something that wasn’t broke.
Anyway, good luck, Mrs. Trump.
According to CNN:
In a poll conducted by SSRS last week, 57% say they have a favorable impression of Trump, up from 47% in January.
Notably, Trump has seen an increase in favorable feelings from Democrats, up 15 points since the January poll. She is up six points from Republicans. However, overall, Democrats still tilt negative for her, 38% favorable to 40% unfavorable.
CNN speculates that her growing popularity owes to “the sympathy factor.” I think it’s mainly that people are just seeing more of her, including during the recent State Visit by France’s President Emmanuel Macron.
The new numbers come as the Washington Post reports that she and President Trump sleep in different bedrooms and hardly spend any time together, even as she begins to up her profile and assume a more traditional first lady role – while Ivanka Trump has faded into the background.
The Post reported:
The Trumps are often apart even during their free time, according to several people who know the couple’s schedules. At Mar-a-Lago on holidays and weekends, the president golfs or dines with politicians, business executives and media personalities on the patio, while Melania is often nowhere to be seen. According to several current and former aides, the president and first lady often do not eat together in the White House either.
“They spend very little to no time together,” said one longtime friend of the president.
Melania’s press secretary said the president and the first lady do spend time with each other.
“Aside from the president’s solo trips, the family spends most evenings together.” She also played down the headlines about Trump’s alleged affairs and said Melania “is focused on being a mom. She’s focused on being a wife, and she’s focused on her role as first lady. And that’s it. The rest is just noise.”
Sanders didn’t shy away from religious themes, telling the story of the resurrection. Continue Reading
And then he got walked down the Collonade to the Oval Office. This kid, Kyle Kashuv, has a lot of guts. I’m sure he’s taking untold abuses from Democrats and even his classmates for speaking out in favor of the Second Amendment and saying it was not cool to diss the president. Meantime, several of… Continue Reading
It’s toward the end of the video. Continue Reading
I think one of the few things in life I can’t deal with is a children’s hospital. Seeing sick children just kills me. On the same day that Melania visited a children’s hospital in Cincinnati, a nasty, mean-spirited piece about her by columnist Petula Dvorak appeared over in the Washington Post, attacking her for not… Continue Reading