Former First Lady Melania Trump is finally addressing her controversial and highly criticized decision to wear a ‘I really don’t care’ jacket while touring a migrant detention center in 2018.
In her explosive new memoir, she claims she forced her husband Donald to drop his hardline immigration policy of separating children from their parents at the border under the administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy.
But when on a surprise visit to survey a migrant detention center in June 2018, she caused a frenzy when she wore a jacket with the message ‘I really don’t care. Do U?’
It caused an avalanche of criticism as she left the world guessing what she meant by it.
She addresses the controversial attire in her tell-all book coming out next Tuesday.
Former First Lady Melania Trump stirred controversy when she wore a jacket with the message ‘I really don’t care. Do u?’ when she went to visit migrant children at the U.S-Mexico border in June 2018. She is now claiming the message was targeting the media
Melania called the message ‘discreet yet impactful’ and claimed it was meant to protest against ‘anonymously sourced reporting.’
‘I was determined… not to let the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border,’ she wrote.
‘In fact, I decided to let them know that their criticism would never stop me from doing what I feel is right. To make the point, I wore a particular jacket as I boarded the plane, a jacket that quickly became famous,’ she added.
Trump recounts how when the plane door closed, her press secretary’s inbox was ‘flooded with urgent emails from top-tier media outlets regarding the jacket.’
‘It’s a message for the media,’ I said, ‘to let them know I was unconcerned with their opinions of me’ [but] she told me I couldn’t say that. ‘Why not? It is the truth.” Trump wrote about their exchange.
‘I disagreed with her insistence that I couldn’t say that,’ Trump wrote. ‘Ignoring my comments, she told a CNN reporter she was friendly with that it was simply a jacket, a fashion choice with no underlying message.’
Trump wrote that the frenzy over the jacket ‘overshadowed the importance of the children, the border, and the policy change.’ She called it ‘just another example of the media’s irresponsible behavior.’
Her press secretary at the time, Stephanie Grisham, disputed Trump’s account that the jacket was to target the media in her own book.
The now Trump-critic claimed when they returned to Washington, D.C., after the trip, Trump was the one to come up with the idea, telling them to say they were ‘talking to the f***ing press.’
Former First Lady Melania Trump wrote in her new memoir that she made her husband Donald stop the strict immigration policy that separated migrant children from their parents at the border when he was president. She called it ‘unacceptable’
The administration was embroiled in controversy for taking a hardline approach to stopping illegal migrants from entering the U.S., threatening to arrest every single perpetrator coming across the southern border.
As a result, family members would be temporarily detained separately while going through the processing procedures.
The policy caused an international uproar in 2018 while her husband was president, but the ex-first lady says she made him stop it.
‘This has to stop,’ the former first lady said she told her husband.
She wrote she was ’emphasizing the trauma it was causing these families’ and he ‘assured her’ he would investigate before announcing the end of the policy on June 20, 2018.
Her account of events is included in her new memoir being released next week, but excerpts about her views on immigration and her intervention were reported Thursday by the Guardian.
She called the family separations ‘unacceptable.’
In the book, Trump wrote of the children ‘being held in overcrowded detention centers and in absolute squalor … raised serious questions about their health and well-being.’
Former first lady Melania Trump also revealed in her forthcoming memoir that she is pro-choice. The admission comes as her husband, former President Donald Trump (right), has been widely credited with the erosion of abortion rights in the United States
She went on: ‘The lack of a clear plan for reuniting families and the absence of a definitive policy on these separations only added to the public’s outrage. I felt strongly that the situation demanded urgent attention and action.’
Trump herself is an immigrant who came to the U.S. from Slovenia and became a U.S. citizen in 2006.
‘I am sympathetic to all who wish to find a better life in this country. As an immigrant myself, I intimately understand the necessary if arduous process of legally becoming an American,’ she wrote about her approach to her husband.
On immigration, she wrote: ‘Given my past experiences with unfair media narratives, I always approached the news with some skepticism. Before discussing the border crisis with him, I thoroughly educated myself on the situation.’
The newest revelations are just the latest in a series of explosive claims brought to light in Trump’s book, which gets into areas where the former first lady disagrees with her husband.
Trump wrote in the memoir on abortion that she supports a woman’s right to choose and that she has ‘carried this belief’ for her ‘entire adult life.’
