Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme and brace for secondhand awkwardness once more. Elusive First Lady Melania Trump appeared either shocked, awed, confused, horrified, or some combination of all of the above in a video of her and President Trump meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday.
After shaking hands and a brief spoken exchange with Putin, Mrs. Trump, in a buttery yellow Gucci coat, turns to the glare of the cameras with a bizarre, frozen expression on her face, as if she’d just seen a ghost—or perhaps the man whose spies masterminded interference in the 2016 presidential election. Either one. Or, maybe Putin, ripping a page from the Trump playbook, praised Melania for being in “such good physical shape,” sparking her instant outrage. Or this is just her default setting due to living in the Trump White House. It’s anybody’s guess, really.
It’s the latest tense, secondhand-embarrassment-producing moment for the First Lady, beginning with Trump leaving her in the dust while greeting the Obamas on Inauguration Day in 2017, and culminating in that time she really, really did not want to hold her husband’s hand, leading to the triumphant hand swat seen ’round the world. Then, of course, after Melania’s kidney surgery and subsequent three-week-plus break from the public eye, there was the afternoon the president told the press corps that Melanie, I mean, Melania, was “doing great. She’s looking at us right there”—and pointed to a seemingly empty window in the White House residence.
What exactly is going on here? One may never know, until Melania’s eventual ghostwritten tell-all memoir. For now, what happens in Helsinki stays in Helsinki.
