PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2020-11-13 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did Melania Trump Say 'Who Gives a F*ck about Christmas Stuff'? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • A secretly taped conversation from July 2018 between Melania Trump and former top aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff recorded several profanity-laced comments made by the first lady, including: Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration? Nearly two years after this story was originally published, the former first lady issued a statement on social media about the audio recordings, claiming that context was missing from the misleading exchanges: The audio first aired on Oct. 1, 2020, on the CNN primetime program Anderson Cooper 360. Cooper referred to Wolkoff as her former best friend, and The New York Times identified Wolkoff as being a close confidant. The portion about Christmas runs from 4:35-6:03 in this video: It is true that the first lady said the words: Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration? The quote appeared to be in the context of Mrs. Trump having wished she could concentrate on more important duties, including purportedly wishing to reunite a mother and child that may have been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time, the Trump administration was under scrutiny for its practice of separating families at that border with no clear plan for reuniting them. (More than two years later in October 2020, hundreds of such children had still not been reunited with their parents.) Wolkoff's audio recordings featured more of the first lady talking about her June 21, 2018, visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, in which she received quite a bit of press for a jacket she wore that read: I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U? Running from 2:44-4:34 in the same video from Anderson Cooper 360, Trump mentioned her visit to see the children who came to America: Mrs. Trump's reference to the idea that former President Barack Obama had a family separation policy is misleading, however. Family separation was not a federal requirement prior to the Trump administration. The Obama administration built cages that have housed children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. However, photographs of the cages from his time in office depicted unaccompanied minors who crossed the border without parents or guardians, which was different from children being separated from their families by the United States government. Another claim that surfaced in 2020 about first lady and Christmas is that she purportedly said 2020 marks the final holiday season for the Trump White House. This was false, however, as the website that promoted the misleading quote was not an official government website. Mrs. Trump's recorded conversation added a new chapter to what has been long referred to as The War on Christmas, which has quite a long history. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url