Hard to pick a biggest “wtf logic” moment in this garbage fire of a statement, but here goes:
—Melania Trump claims that because she was busy with archiving various unnamed things in the White House on Jan. 6 (which is someone else’s job — namely the White House Curator & the White House Historical Society — but okay), she wasn’t aware of what was really going on outside. That strains belief, given that the crowd Donald Trump summoned to the White House numbered in the several thousands, and it was a rowdy event with multiple speakers, that would have been impossible not to notice, but okay. Let’s run with it.
—Melania Trump berates her Chief of Staff, Stephanie Grisham, for not being in the White House, going so far as to call it a “dereliction of duty.”
—Melania Trump’s statement omits a ton of context, but the reason she’s going so hard after Stephanie Grisham is because Ms. Grisham testified that she tried to get Melania Trump to issue a statement of condemnation to the mob, and she refused to do so. That, of course, implicates Melania Trump in a dereliction of duty.
Here’s the kicker:
—Melania Trump is claiming that her lack of knowledge of what was happening outside on Jan. 6 stems from the fact she was busy in the White House. But by her own admission, ***Stephanie Grisham was not in the White House — ergo Grisham was in fact in a perfect position to keep Melania Trump apprised of the important events taking place outside the White House.***
Not that being in the White House is ever an excuse for not knowing about a riot occurring just down the street at the Capitol building, in our age of push alerts and instantaneous electronic communication that ensured the whole damn country (whether on staff at the White House or not) knew about this event in real time as it was unfolding — but whatever.
This statement hoists Melania Trump’s alibi on its own petard. There is no way in hell Melania Trump was unaware of what was going on outside the White House on Jan. 6. She would be on firmer ground denying knowing that violence was escalating at the Capitol, which is several blocks away, but that’s contradicted by Ms. Grisham’s pleas to Melania Trump, which her statement here does nothing to deny.
I am quite sure this statement wasn’t a lawyer’s idea, as it only implicates herself further and raises far more questions than it answers. However, it would not surprise me at all if this statement was Donald Trump’s idea and indeed his work.
