Melania Trump isn’t missing, she’s just moved in with Barack and Michelle Obama, suggests Chicago Tribune writer Rex Huppke. Of course, Huppke is kidding, but he’s making the absurd suggestion as a way to highlight what he believes are other absurd things Donald Trump has suggested.
It’s been three weeks since the first lady was last seen in public. Officially, she went to the hospital for a minor kidney procedure — a procedure that is usually done outpatient — and has been all but invisible since then. And while the president insists that she’s in the White House and everything is normal, speculation has been rampant as to what’s going on with her.
The Tribune’s Rex Huppke has an idea.
“The Deep State helped sneak Melania out of the White House through a tunnel and she is now living with Barack and Michelle Obama.”
Make no mistake: Huppke is being satirical, which he admits in the paragraph immediately after he makes the claim that Melania has moved in with Mr. and Mrs. Obama. But, he suggests the utterly ridiculous notion as a way to illustrate some of the equally-ridiculous things Donald Trump has been known to suggest.
The Deep State/Spygate Connection
The “Deep State,” if you haven’t heard the term, is a conspiracy theory that suggests that some agency or agencies within the government are actually, secretly controlling things. It’s a popular belief among Trump supporters, according to the New Yorker , and even Donald Trump himself appears to believe in it. According to a November, 2017, L.A. Times report, Trump urged “deep state authorities” to investigate Hillary Clinton.
Melania Trump will not be traveling to Camp David with Trump https://t.co/RXRRgjJs8v pic.twitter.com/0tHuOaBdMr
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 2, 2018
Further, Trump apparently believes that the Deep State is behind efforts to put spies in the Trump campaign, which Trump deemed “Spygate.”
Other, Equally Absurd (According To Huppke) Things Trump Believes
The Deep State/Spygate situation is just the latest in a long list of things that Trump apparently believes, all equally absurd as the notion that Melania has moved in with the Obamas. Those things include, but are not limited to, Trump’s insistence that the crowd size at his inauguration was the biggest in history (it wasn’t); that there is, and always has been, widespread voter fraud (there isn’t); that Trump Tower phones were tapped (they weren’t); that Obama’s birth certificate isn’t real (it is); and so on.
Huppke’s point, of course, is not that Melania truly did move in with the Obamas. It’s that Trump and his supporters believe ideas that are equally ridiculous.
