Updated: The missing Melania mystery: Money grubbing monkey or Mona Lisa?

  

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By Hal Brown

This is from: 

PR Experts Are Advising Melania Trump ‘To Keep Her Distance’ & Plan Ahead To Do This Extra Step Amid Donald’s Legal Woes - YaHoo Entertainment

Actually, it’s getting so intense that PR experts are saying Donald’s wife Melania Trump would not only “keep her distance,” but also “plan an escape route.”

PR expert Jane Owen recently told the Mirror she thinks Melania should do both of these measures before the legal ramifications get worse. “If I was Melanie’s friend or her publicist I would be advising her to keep her distance as well. The easiest thing to justify is the lack of something,” she said. “She can say she was with her child, doing charity work, busy with literally anything and no one can fault her for it. Donald himself is not going to draw attention to her absence as a negative thing. So it’s the easiest option.”

I don't see Melania as a monster or a monkey, the image above is meant to depict someone who could be a grifter, living in the major monkey's mansion as his wife, playing the role or being the role of the loving, loyal steadfast spouse. He may have given her a case of monkey see monkey do. She also could be an enigmatic Mona Lisa marching to her munificent and maternal heartbeat.

Melania is the mystery woman in more ways than one. 

Accounts of what she's really like are contradictory. Is she an egotistical grifter like hubby? Is she a humble person more comfortable out of the spotlight  who is mostly concerned with the well-being of her son?  If you have a subscrption read The Very Private Life of Melania Trump here.

This is how the very long article concludes:

While first ladies often capitalize on the attendant fame, Mrs. Trump’s moneymaking venture is different from those of her predecessors, said Kate Andersen Brower, the author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.”

Michelle Obama was reportedly paid more than $60 million in a joint book deal with her husband, as well as commanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches and signing a lucrative production deal with Netflix. Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton also sold their memoirs for millions. Their memoirs and paid speeches required the former first ladies to share some details about themselves, their views and their lives in the White House.

By simply selling images, Mrs. Trump reveals nothing.

That’s exactly how she likes it, Ms. Brower said.

“She’s the most obviously unknowable first lady,” she said of Mrs. Trump’s public persona. “There’s something radical about it. First ladies are expected to want to please people and I’m not sure she really cares.”

Here's another excerpt about her husband running for reelection:

“He has my support, and we look forward to restoring hope for the future and leading America with love and strength...”

Does she really think Donald Trump is capable of leading America with love?

For that matter, doe she really truly love her husband? Does she know what love is?

I've done a lot of marriage counseling in my 40 years as a therapist, and worked with uncountable women who were married to emotional abusive men, some of whom had extreme nacssistic personality disorder and were incable of empathy. Without empathy for your partner I don't see how it's possible to love them. A couple can also have a transactional marriage without one being emotionally withholding  or emotionally abusive. I don't consider either of these to be a loving marriage.

Women can love abusive husbands because they have very low self-esteem and don't feel or believe they can do any better. Some feel they don't deserve more. It is all, to state the obvious, very complicated.

We just don't know whether Melania loves her husband and if she does feel love for him what she gets out of the marriage.

I find it telling about her personality that she auctioned a drawing  her wearing one of her hats with a portion going to charity. Who does that?

See pre-auction article and results of auction.

Bascially this is a hohum-who-cares subject, though I cared enough to write it. As someone who was a therapist for my entire career I find her and their marriage interesting.

Her absense at Trump campaign events or in court should he testify in person will be noted but while her pressense might help his burnish image especially with women who are already in his cult her absense won't mean a hill of beans.

As first lady she will be a curiosity as one who did basically nothing of significance except wear the "I don't care" jacket. She certainly would not be number 11 on this list of the 10 most influential Fist Ladies. If anyone will make number 11 on the list it will be Dr. Jill Biden.

Will Trump's Tucker Show be a Big Whoop or a Whopping Wowza?

 

By Hal Brown

Trump and Tucker hope that their planned competing event  (click left or here) will get people to watch  the One True And Only Best And Greatest Now And Forever President Donald J. Trump on the latest episode of The Tucker Twitter Show instead of the GOP debate. 

If they believed there was a God who answered prayers they'd be begging for a ginormous audience instead of a big whoop, or even worse, a philosphical thought experiment of the exploration of the question "if a fatso farts in the forest and noone's there does it make any noise?" 

Obviously both Trump and Tucker want their show to be a whopping wowza and not a big whoop. It's impossible to say who wants this more, but clearly Trump needs this more than Tucker does. If it stinks or sinks, or both, they'll both tout the fact that it got the biggest audience for anything ever posted on Twitter and for once this self-aggrandizement might not be a lie.

“This tube is the Gospel. The ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers!” Howard Beale in the 1976 Paddy Chayefsky film “Network.” Of course the character's best known line is "I'm mad as hell I'm not going to take it anymore (watch video clip) but his comment about the power of television still holds true. There is a difference today. The big boob tube now competes with the Internet for influence which for most people is either the size of a cell phone screen or the size of a laptop screen.

It takes a small amount of effort to use the Internet while turning on a television and switching channels is easy. In the early days of TV you had to get up to switch channels and then we had clickers that used to acutally click and now we can just say Fox News out loud, like I did to take the above photo, and viola, there's Fox and Friends.

To find Tucker Carlson's Twitter page where he'll be presenting the glorious Trump event which he hopes is the climax of his career, call it the Orgasm in Orange, you have to do a little work. 

The most recent episode is his interview with Ramaswamy lower right.

It won't be diffiuclt for regular users of Twitter to find. The real question is whether they'll want to see Trump so badly they'll decide to do it on the little screen instead of the big screen.

Trump knows how adicted people are to their big, often giant, screen televisions. 

Click to read article

They are just like him. They love their television shows. Most of them don't read for entertainment or information. They watch television or YouTubes. This is why Trump is so outraged over the Fox News no longer functioning as his personal soapbox and megaphone, and why the preening narcissist  (read my story) is making such a fuss over the unlfattering photos they are using for screenshots of him.

This is what Trump posted on Truth Social:

"Why doesn't Fox and Friends show all of the Polls where I am beating Biden, by a lot. Also, they purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big 'orange' one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they're not."

I found it amusing that he called himself "big 'orange'' with the quotes around the word "big" when his critics sometimes call him "big orange" or mock him because of the orange tinted makeup he apparently applies to his face:

We'll have to see whether this plan works for Trump, or if he changes his mind at the last minute and decides to ditch Tucker and join the debate. The chance to prance on the big screen may be to hard to resist.

If he does the Twitter Twist and shakes his booty on Tucker's show no doubt many people will watch it instead of the TV debate on Fox News, and others may do what I did when I took the photo on the top of this blog. They may make their own version of the split screen and watch both at the same time.

I doubt I'll watch either on Wednesday. I don't know what streaming video show we'll be watching next week, but it's sure to be more entertaining than Trump and Tucker or the GOP debate. Chris Christi if the only candidate worth watching and he'll have to split his time with these yahoos:

I'll count on Morning Joe to show clips of the highlights and lowlights.

Addendum: One possiblity suggested by a former Trump advisory is that Trump will "suck all the oxygen out of the air" by turning himself in to to the authorities in Georgia during the debate and having Tucker Carlson interview him as he exits the jail.

While I think this is possible I think it is not likely because it will get more people to watch his arrest at the jail. I doubt he'll want addtional people to see him being led through the process like an ordinary criminal. This will be televised so it won't be up to courtroom artists to show how he looked. He's a good actor but pretending this doesn't bother him for the cameras may be beyond his ability.
 

More: For an indepth article read Inside Trump’s Decision to Skip the G.O.P. Debate in the NY Times, subscription required.

Excerpt:

The former president has been quizzing confidants lately about whether he should debate. He has fixated on former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is expected to be his harshest critic on the stage. And he has expressed a particularly intense disdain for the low-polling former governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, suggesting privately that it would be almost insulting to share a stage with him, according to a person who spoke to Mr. Trump.

Senior members of Mr. Trump’s team — Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller and Mr. Cheung — all plan to attend the debate. The Trump campaign has arranged for prominent surrogates, including members of Congress, to visit the “spin room” after the debate to make Mr. Trump’s case.

But as of Friday, Mr. Trump appeared to have lost interest in attending the debate, according to people with knowledge of his thinking. And he is now planning to attempt to upstage the event by participating in the interview with Mr. Carlson, though the exact timing and online platform remain unclear.

Here's a summary of the NYT article from Raw Story.

Yoiks, more Hunter hysteria. Somebody left a dime bag of cocaine in the White House.

 

Above: DEA website showing a small amount of cocaine and DonkeyHotey caricature, modifed by author. 

Is this worth calling it Crackgate? Wait for Jim Jordan to open a House committee investigation.

By Hal Brown

Here's a story that should really have been a major hoo-hum once it turned out that the powder discovered in the White House wasn't some kind of deadly poison. As you can see by clicking here it is all over the news. Call it hunting Hunter hysteria. 

Of course Fox News had a story:

Those who want to turn hapless Hunter Biden into a demonic presidential progeny, a modern day version of Rosemary's Baby (you know who impregnanted Rosemary) will use this opportunity to suggest that the Oval Office is a dope den where Joe and Hunter snort lines of coke together. 

In fact, Hunter Biden's addction was to crack, not cocaine from which it is derived (read about diffrences here), and to alcohol, which isn't to say he never snorted cocaine. This is irrelevent to those who want to hype this story into yet another way to hound Hunter.

Trump jumped all over this:

Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden. But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was “very small,” & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish. Has Deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me!

I assume the next all cap paranoid rant will accuse Jack Smith, Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden of snorting lines of coke on the Oval Office desk or, since he doesn't know a coke snorter from a crack smoker, that they're doing lines of blow chased by  smoking rock and maybe downing a few speedballs for good measure. Maybe Trump will claim they party down with their pal Cracky the Crackhead...

I don't know how Trump knows what a crackhead looks like or that the term means someone who is addicted to crack cocaine, not powder cocaine, which is usually smoked and not inhaled through the nose (Reference). Perhaps he thinks they all look like Cracky the Crackhead.

According to FanDom: "Cracky the Crackhead or Cracky, is a supporting character throughout the Howeiazy series which I 'd never heard of until now. Cracky usually goes around to people arbitrarily and tries to negotiate deals with them in exchange for compensation or drugs."

DeSantis attempted to respond with his version of humor: “A lot of us have believed the Biden administration has been blowing it on a lot of fronts … I guess it’s a little more literal than even I had thought.” I have to begrudgingly give credit to DeSantis if he was the one who decided to say Biden was "blowing it" using one of the slang words, blow, for cocaine.

Sensible people will conclude that the most likely explanation for this is that someone realized that they had the "dime bag" (see below) on their person and decided it was prudent to get rid of it. The next most likely explanation is that somebody planted it there to cause trouble.

Addendum:

Peruse the articles and you'll come across this in The Guardian:

Related from a year ago, also in The Guardian:

Cocaine, the yuppie drug? Not now, say experts – its lure is crossing all classes

As the pie chart from this website shows, far more people use cocaine than use crack.

Crack and cocaine are different (see website). Crack, like heroin and meth, are known as street drugs while cocaine is often considered a party drug and has a reputation of being used by celebrities and well known people (see list of 15 of them). 

 

Above: DEA website showing a small amount of cocaine and DonkeyHotey caricature, modifed by author. 

Is this worth calling it Crackgate? Wait for Jim Jordan to open a House committee investigation.

By Hal Brown

Here's a story that should really have been a major hoo-hum once it turned out that the powder discovered in the White House wasn't some kind of deadly poison. As you can see by clicking here it is all over the news. Call it Hunter hysteria. 

Of course Fox News had a story:

Those who want to turn hapless Hunter Biden into a demonic presidential progeny, a modern day version of Rosemary's Baby (you know who impregnanted Rosemary) will use this opportunity to suggest that the Oval Office is a dope den where Joe and Hunter snort lines of coke together. 

In fact, Hunter Biden's addction was to crack, not cocaine from which it is derived (read about diffrences here), and to alcohol, which isn't to say he never snorted cocaine. This is irrelevent to those who want to hype this story into yet another way to hound Hunter.

Trump jumped all over this:

Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden. But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was “very small,” & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish. Has Deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me!

I assume the next all cap paranoid rant will accuse Jack Smith, Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden of snorting lines of coke on the Oval Office desk or, since he doesn't know a coke snorter from a crack smoker, that they're doing lines of blow chased by  smoking rock and maybe downing a few speedballs for good measure. Maybe Trump will claim they party down with their pal Cracky the Crackhead...

I don't know how Trump knows what a crackhead looks like or that the term means someone who is addicted to crack cocaine, not powder cocaine, which is usually smoked and not inhaled through the nose (Reference). Perhaps he thinks they all look like Cracky the Crackhead.

According to FanDom: "Cracky the Crackhead or Cracky, is a supporting character throughout the Howeiazy series which I 'd never heard of until now. Cracky usually goes around to people arbitrarily and tries to negotiate deals with them in exchange for compensation or drugs."

DeSantis attempted to respond with his version of humor: “A lot of us have believed the Biden administration has been blowing it on a lot of fronts … I guess it’s a little more literal than even I had thought.” I have to begrudgingly give credit to DeSantis if he was the one who decided to say Biden was "blowing it" using one of the slang words, blow, for cocaine.

Sensible people will conclude that the most likely explanation for this is that someone realized that they had the "dime bag" (see below) on their person and decided it was prudent to get rid of it. The next most likely explanation is that somebody planted it there to cause trouble.

Addendum:

Peruse the articles and you'll come across this in The Guardian:

Related from a year ago, also in The Guardian:

Cocaine, the yuppie drug? Not now, say experts – its lure is crossing all classes

As the pie chart from this website shows, far more people use cocaine than use crack.

Crack and cocaine are different (see website). Crack, like heroin and meth, are known as street drugs while cocaine is often considered a party drug and has a reputation of being used by celebrities and well known people (see list of 15 of them). 

 

Above: DEA website showing a small amount of cocaine and DonkeyHotey caricature, modifed by author. 

Is this worth calling it Crackgate? Wait for Jim Jordan to open a House committee investigation.

By Hal Brown

Introduction: Substance abuse is a major problem in the United States and treatment programs are sorely both underfunded and unavailable for those who need them the most. Rather than being exoriated or mocked for his previous addiction Hunter Biden 's story should be a cautionary tale. His addiction to both alcohol and crack made it even more diffoicult to overcome. Anyone who finds they have to rely on non-prescribed drugs or alcohol to get through the day should seek help.

Here's a story that should really have been a major hoo-hum once it turned out that the powder discovered in the White House wasn't some kind of deadly poison. As you can see by clicking here it is all over the news. Call it Hunter hysteria. 

Of course Fox News had a story:

Those who want to turn hapless Hunter Biden into a demonic presidential progeny, a modern day version of Rosemary's Baby (you know who impregnanted Rosemary) will use this opportunity to suggest that the Oval Office is a dope den where Joe and Hunter snort lines of coke together. 

In fact, Hunter Biden's addction was to crack, not cocaine from which it is derived (read about diffrences here), and to alcohol, which isn't to say he never snorted cocaine. This is irrelevent to those who want to hype this story into yet another way to hound Hunter.

Trump jumped all over this:

Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden. But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was “very small,” & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish. Has Deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me!

I assume the next all cap paranoid rant will accuse Jack Smith, Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden of snorting lines of coke on the Oval Office desk or, since he doesn't know a coke snorter from a crack smoker, that they're doing lines of blow chased by  smoking rock and maybe downing a few speedballs for good measure. Maybe Trump will claim they party down with their pal Cracky the Crackhead...

I don't know how Trump knows what a crackhead looks like or that the term means someone who is addicted to crack cocaine, not powder cocaine, which is usually smoked and not inhaled through the nose (Reference). Perhaps he thinks they all look like Cracky the Crackhead.

According to FanDom: "Cracky the Crackhead or Cracky, is a supporting character throughout the Howeiazy series which I 'd never heard of until now. Cracky usually goes around to people arbitrarily and tries to negotiate deals with them in exchange for compensation or drugs."

DeSantis attempted to respond with his version of humor: “A lot of us have believed the Biden administration has been blowing it on a lot of fronts … I guess it’s a little more literal than even I had thought.” I have to begrudgingly give credit to DeSantis if he was the one who decided to say Biden was "blowing it" using one of the slang words, blow, for cocaine.

Sensible people will conclude that the most likely explanation for this is that someone realized that they had the "dime bag" (see below) on their person and decided it was prudent to get rid of it. The next most likely explanation is that somebody planted it there to cause trouble.

Addendum:

Peruse the articles and you'll come across this in The Guardian:

Related from a year ago, also in The Guardian:

Cocaine, the yuppie drug? Not now, say experts – its lure is crossing all classes

As the pie chart from this website shows, far more people use cocaine than use crack.

Crack and cocaine are different (see website). Crack, like heroin and meth, are known as street drugs while cocaine is often considered a party drug and has a reputation of being used by celebrities and well known people (see list of 15 of them). 

YOUR FAVORITE PRSIDENT, ME is a mean version of Cliff Clavin.

 Trump's overnight rant on Truth Social:

"I WAS BEING FRAMED BY THE FBI AND THE DOJ, NOW IT CONTINUES WITH THE BOXES HOAX, THE 'PERFECT' PHONE CALL IN ATLANTA, THE MANHATTAN D.A., AND THE NEW YORK STATE A.G. SCAM. WHAT A GROUP, BUT ALL REPORT TO THE DOJ IN WASHINGTON. IT’S JAMES COMEY AND THE SLEAZEBAGS ALL OVER AGAIN. THEY ARE PLAYING ELECTION INTERFERENCE IN 2024 THROUGH ILLEGAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST REPUBLICANS, IN PARTICULAR YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT, ME. THESE ARE CHEATING LOWLIFES, BUT WE WILL WIN. OUR COUNTRY IS GOING TO HELL!" (my bold)

When it comes to self-aggrandizement, between his referring to himself in the third person (see BBC article) and his constant stream of ME, ME, ME, he's like a mean version of Cliff Clavin :

In "Cheers" the mailman played by John Ratzenberger knew everything. Nonetheless he was a rather likable character. Sure, he could be shoehorned into the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, but he wasn't a mean narcissist. He was a know-it-all but he didn't rant and rave and never insulted anyone. 

There's no comparing him to Donald Trump. Trump's unbounded narcissism pushes the limits of grandiosity into the realm of delusion. His widely mocked digital trading cards (which aren't even cards since they aren't are cardboard) are a good example. The reports that he actually considered leaving Johns Hopkins after he was treated for Covid and showing he was wearing a Superman t-shirt under his dress shirt is another example.

 The closest Clavin comes to a public figure who isn't particularly mean today is George Santos with the important difference being that Clavin was likable. Does anybody actually find Santos likable?

Clavin was also a rather sad figure where occasionally he lamented not being able to find a girlfriend. He once explained this was because they didn't want a boyfriend who worked in such a dangerous professional as being a mailman.

There are lots of videos of his funniest moments. Here's one of them.

Sam and Diane's on again off again romance was a central theme of the show. Cliff and Norm had something of a bromance. If I was involved with writing the script today I'd add a lot of thinly veiled sexual innuendo. 

I don't know whether John Ratzenberger still supports Trump although he used to:

Click above to read article from Fox News

From Business Insider:

The "Cheers" and "Toy Story" star announced his support for Trump on Fox News.

"I want us to become self-reliant again... The only candidate out there is Donald Trump, for me, because he's a builder," he said. "He understands better than anybody that if we lose the people — average age is 58 years old by the way of people that actually know how to build things — once they're gone, they're gone and we don't have anybody comin' up behind them."

Below, some of Trump's stable of celebrities: