This is like First Lady Michelle Obama launching a campaign against appeasing Iran, or First Lady Hillary Clinton launching a campaign against, ah, rape. Good cause, good intentions. But you need to have a little self-awareness about whom you’re married to.
There’s no real inconsistency, though. Mrs. Trump’s campaign is aimed specifically at cyberbullying children. Cyberbullying adults — well, that can get you elected president. (Or secure peace on the Korean peninsula?)
Melania Trump, by the way, is a popular figure by Trump administration standards among the public and getting more popular by the day.
In a poll conducted by SSRS last week, 57% say they have a favorable impression of Trump, up from 47% in January. This is the biggest number Melania Trump has experienced in any CNN polling, and higher than any favorability rating earned by President Donald Trump in CNN polling history going back to 1999…
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.
The gender gap in impressions of the first lady has also narrowed, Trump’s numbers are up 7 percentage points among men, but have risen 13 percentage points among women. A majority of women, 54%, now have a positive view of Trump, 30% view her unfavorably.
For sure, some of this is being driven by sympathy for her over the Stormy mess and stories like this one making her relationship with Trump out to be frosty. She can seem at times like a lonely figure. I’ve come to like her, though, because she projects a certain dignity. To some extent that’s the job; feelgood measures like today’s campaign are what First Ladies do. But even personally, despite being a major figure in “The Trump Show,” Melania seems virtuously miscast. She’s not tweeting haphazardly, not giving cringey soundbites, not involved in any dubious business deals or scandals in the making, not belitting or being belitted by anyone. She keeps a low profile and acquits herself well whenever the camera’s on her. A little decorum goes a long way. Hard to believe the public writ large hasn’t noticed, or come to appreciate, it either, which would explain her polling. In fact, I wonder if she didn’t choose cyberbullying as a pet issue in part because she’s trying to warn people away from following you-know-who’s example. She was involved in arguably the most obnoxious tweet Trump ever sent, after all.
Exit question: Can we really rightly say that an adult man has been “cyberbullied” if he appears to have enjoyed it?
The post FLOTUS launches campaign against … cyberbullying appeared first on Hot Air.