Where's Melania? Not at Trump's Post-Verdict Press Conference

31 May 2024

Vanity Fair

In April 2023, Donald Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago hours after he was arraigned in New York on 34 Class E felony charges stemming from the hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Notably absent was Melania Trump, his wife of nearly two decades, who was reportedly still angry about her spouse’s alleged affair* with the porn star and supposedly did not “sympathize” with the fact that he was facing criminal charges and possibly even time in prison. And some 14 months and 34 guilty counts later, her attitude does not appear to have changed, at least when it comes to supporting her husband in public!

Yes, the former first lady, who has not released a formal statement since Thursday’s verdict, did not appear at Trump’s press conference on Friday morning at Trump Tower. Naturally, no reason was given for her absence—perhaps she simply had prior plans she just could not get out of! If she had made it, though, she would have been treated to one of her husband’s characteristically unhinged rants, roughly 83% of which contained made-up claims.

Said rant included:

A plea for people to feel sorry for him because he’s old

A bold, definitely not true claim that “everybody” has NDAs

A bold, also not true claim that Democrats don’t want people to have cars

A racist aside about the languages spoken in schools (he would’ve been okay with Russian, Vlad!)

A claim that there was “literally” a crucifixion, which, if true, probably would have been widely reported

*Yes, he denies this.

House Speaker Mike Johnson urges the Supreme Court to “step in” to overturn Trump’s conviction

The devout House Speaker, who’s against pornography but apparently not against hush money payments to porn stars, strikes again. Per Axios:

“There’s a lot of developments yet to come, but I do believe the Supreme Court should step in. Obviously, this is totally unprecedented,” Johnson said Friday in an appearance on Fox & Friends. “I think that the justices on the Court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight,” the Louisiana Republican added.

The good news here is that all of the justices on the high court are extremely unbiased and have never once suggested something crazy, like that presidents should be able to commit federal crimes.

Front-runner for the unintentionally funniest prediction of 2024?

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