Melania Trump Won't Find a Better First Lady Role Model Than Michelle
You would think Fox News, after eight years of screaming unhinged criticisms of Michelle Obama at its rapidly shrinking audience, would finally have found some peace now that she’s gone. They couldn’t shut up about how unhappy they were when she was there, so what a relief it must be for them to no longer need to feel victimized by her organic White House garden and encouraging reminders to send your kids outside to play once in awhile. #GoodAdvice
And yet, a year into the Trump presidency, Fox is still profiting off conservative antipathy toward the former First Lady with ridiculous headlines like this: “Melania Trump Cuts Bloated First Lady Payroll from Michelle Obama Days.” Hmmmm, let's analyze this shall we?
So what exactly are Fox and Frenemies upset about this time? It’s a true political scandal (NOT!):
It turns out Michelle Obama had 24 employees working for her while she was First Lady, while Melania Trump only has nine. Now, if you’re a dedicated fiscal conservative who believes America should be as sparing as possible with taxpayer dollars, then this is good news. Melania is saving an iota of a fraction of a drop in the bucket that is the annual federal budget. (If you’re actually a dedicated fiscal conservative, you’ve got a lot worse things to worry about.)
So why did Michelle have so many more staffers? Well, during her time in office, First Lady Michelle Obama's accomplishments included:
Starting the Let’s Move campaign, which brought the medical industry, community leaders, schools and parents together to combat childhood obesity.
Securing bipartisan support for free and reduced-price lunches for 21 million low-income kids.
Convincing several large corporations to build or expand stores in “food deserts,” providing healthy food options to almost 10 million people who previously didn’t have them, and creating thousands of local jobs.
Convincing one of the largest restaurant chains in the world to offer healthier kids’ choices, and improve the all-around nutritional quality of their menu offerings.
Changing the outdated Food Pyramid to the newer, more accurate, more intuitive MyPlate, and partnering with thousands of groups across the nation to get updated nutritional information into parents’ hands.
Convincing Wal-Mart to lower the cost of fruits, vegetables and whole grain foods by $1 billion total over the course of a year, and to raise the nutritional standards of many other products they sell.
The marvel here is that she accomplished all of that with only 24 employees, while raising two amazing kids and fulfilling all of her ceremonial and travel duties as First Lady. If you’re a dedicated fiscal conservative, you should be delighted that the government created that many jobs and improved that many people’s lives on that small of a budget.
In contrast, these are Melania Trump’s accomplishments thus far (according to this Fox News article):
She stayed in New York while her son, Barron, finished out his school year (costing taxpayers millions, estimated at over $127,000+ per day, according to CBS News)
She convened a roundtable meeting about the opioid crisis (okay, good, someone needs to do something about the worst drug overdose epidemic in American history).
She traveled with her husband to hurricane-affected areas and to meet with the victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Necessary and appropriate.
Slow start. Melania says she’s interested in figuring out how to combat cyberbullying. Melania, we’re behind you 100 percent! We can’t wait for you to start taking down big, obnoxious cyberbullies like this guy. He’s a huge pain in everyone’s a**.
If we keep it real, Melania Trump doesn’t need 24 employees. Nine seems to do the trick for her current portfolio. We doubt she’ll have as many accomplishments as Michelle Obama. But if she really wants to make the most of her time in the White House and affect a substantial change - without drama or wasted taxpayer dollars - she won’t find a better role model than Michelle Obama....period!
