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Melania Trump has addressed the scandal surrounding the controversial “I don’t care” jacket she wore while visiting migrant children separated from their parents on the southern border.
The former first lady claims in her new memoir that the real motivation behind the coat, emblazoned with the slogan “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” was to challenge “the media’s false narratives” about her and as a protest against reporting based on anonymous sources.
The $39 Zara jacket sparked uproar and quickly went viral, with critics calling Melania “unempathetic” and “tone deaf” after the visit to a migrant child detention center in Texas in 2018.
She claimed the fallout was “just another example of the media’s irresponsible behavior.”
“I was determined … not to let the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border,” Melania shares in her memoir, as seen by The Guardian. “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.”
Melania described the stunt as “discreet yet impactful” – however, it backfired. She writes how her press secretary Stephanie Grisham’s inbox was soon “flooded with urgent emails from top-tier media outlets regarding the jacket.”
She told Grisham it was “a message for the media, to let them know I was unconcerned with their opinions of me,” but her press secretary argued Melania “couldn’t say that.”
“Why not? It is the truth.’ I disagreed with her insistence that I couldn’t say that. 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,” Melania writes in her book.
However, according to Grisham in her book I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House, it was Donald Trump’s idea to shift the focus onto the press. “You just tell them you were talking to the f***ing press,” Trump allegedly said in a “damage control session” after the pair got back to Washington DC.
He also posted on Twitter: “‘I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?’ written on the back of Melania’s jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!”
Melania says the publicity storm “overshadowed the importance of the children, the border, and the policy change.”
Another revelation in the former first lady’s book, titled Melania, includes the claim she was the one who made Trump ditch the cruel immigration policy where migrant children were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
Between 2017 and 2021, Trump’s administration separated at least 3,900 children from their parents at the border under a “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“This has to stop,” Melania says she told her husband, “emphasizing the trauma it was causing these families.”
Trump signed an executive order to halt the separation of families on June 20, 2018, but the ramifications of the policy continued long after.
