A lot of people were fed up with Melania Trump when she wore that infamous jacket,
but for one particular media personality, his negativity towards the former First
Lady goes much deeper. And as for a certain beloved actress, she chose to
turn her disgust into activism. These are the celebs who can't stand Melania Trump.
Considering Chrissy Teigen's love for Twitter and her fearless attitude towards calling people out,
it's no shock that she's sassed Melania Trump. For a little context, Trump launched the campaign
Be Best in her initiative as First Lady to focus on cyberbullying towards children.
While that may be a laudable cause, Teigen wasn't seeing much progress.
As she tweeted on March 17, 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic,
"Has Melania even thought about doing something with her be best s--- during these times? I see
regular ass awesome people on my timeline all day doing all they can to make people
happy and this wifebot is working on whatever the f--- a tennis gazebo is."
And Teigen wasn't done, as she also tweeted,
"ALL I have seen this bot do is gently touch Christmas ornaments in a cape and stare in a
cape and pat statues in a different cape and then change her cape into a rude a-- jacket. F--- you."
"That was serious."
"I know. I know."
Teigen eventually threw Trump a bone by the end of her husband's presidency,
as she tweeted on January 21, 2021,
"Melania killed the White House fashion game."
Things didn't go down well for Bette Midler when she took to Twitter to roast Melania
Trump after her speech from the Rose Garden for the Republican National Convention on August 25,
2020. Midler mocked Trump's White House initiative
as well as her husband's way of phrasing things. As Midler put it,
"[Be Best] is back! A UGE bore!
She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage!"
And Midler wasn't quite done, as she also tweeted,
"Oh, God. She still can't speak English."
Midler's tweets led to a significant backlash, as many felt it was in poor taste to mock someone
for her accent and speaking abilities, with radio host Ross Kaminsky responding,
"How many languages do you speak, Bette? Melania: Slovenian, English, French, Italian, and German."
And reporter Mary Margaret Olohan asked,
"Are you actually mocking an immigrant who became the
First Lady of the United States for her accent?"
Others brought up their own experiences of immigration
and learning a new language, as one user wrote,
"Bette, comment really uncalled for. My grandparents immigrated to the US. They worked
hard, became American citizens. They learned English, they spoke with a broken English accent!
I was always very proud of my grandparents. You've just insulted a whole demographic of people."
Others said that they were able to fully comprehend Trump's speech and
that the mockery was uncalled for. Midler apologized the next day, as she tweeted,
"I was wrong to make fun of her accent. America is made up [of] people who speak
with all kinds of accents, and they are all welcomed always."
Stephen Colbert wasn't particularly impressed with Melania Trump's jacket choice when she
visited Texas for an official visit. During an episode of The Late Show , he noted that the First
Lady's role here was to visit detained children and demonstrate that they were being cared for.
When Colbert and his team saw the photo of Melania in that infamous jacket that read
"I really don't care, do u?", they had to check it repeatedly.
"Cause we thought, This has to be fake!"
Stephanie Grisham, who served as the White
House press secretary at the time, told The New York Times,
"No one tells the first lady what to do. Our office has nothing to do with what clothing
choices she makes and this situation was no different."
Grisham also noted that there was no hidden message to the outfit choice.
But Colbert had plenty to say about that.
"Right! It's definitely not hidden!"
"And I'm going to guess this is one message she did not steal from Michelle Obama."
The mention of former First Lady Obama was a reference to the uncomfortable moment in
June 2016 at the Republican National Convention when Melania Trump's speech
was strikingly similar to the one that her predecessor gave in 2008.
Trump's team denied any plagiarism, but that didn't exactly shield her from the criticism.
It's become tradition for the First Lady to take on a project of her own, and for Melania Trump,
It was her Be Best initiative. It had the aim of tackling online bullying first and foremost,
along with other issues that younger generations struggle with. Interestingly
enough, as reported by The New York Times, her husband advised her against such a campaign.
This was precisely because of how bombastic he could get on Twitter,
and he predicted that she would get mocked because of the nature of her project.
Lady Gaga for one provided proof to Donald Trump's warnings.
As the singer-songwriter tweeted on November 6, 2016,
"[Melania Trump], to say u will stand for 'anti-bullying' is hypocrisy.
Your husband is 1 of the most notorious bullies we have ever witnessed."
Some people clapped back at Gaga, claiming that she was doing the exact same thing,
with one user responding,
"I call [your] attack on the 1st lady bullying."
Someone else got even more vehement by declaring,
"Oh and this is no bullying. Hypocrites!"
The Be Best campaign faced other issues besides celebrity scrutiny. Many of the
ideas for the initiative simply never came to fruition. Either way, Gaga's complaints were
really targeted more towards Donald Trump than they were to his wife or the Be Best campaign.
Comedian and View co-host Joy Behar stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers in June 2017
and then dished with the host regarding her thoughts about the then-President and First Lady.
She made sure to note that Donald Trump had actually appeared on The View many times,
and she specifically referenced the infamous episode in which he appeared
alongside his daughter Ivanka and declared,
"I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
"Stop it! Oh, it's so weird! Stop it!"
The topic of discussion then switched to Melania,
with Behar noting that she felt sorry for the First Lady.
"She had to sleep with him once."
"Oh."
"At least once she did, right?"
"Yeah, at least once."
Behar then added,
"Then when she was in New York and we had to pay a million dollars a day to keep her here
just because she doesn't want to sleep with him, we have to pay for that. I didn't like that."
Meyers then chimed in,
"I don't want to sleep with him but nobody gives me any extra money."
"Exactly right!"
"They don't pay my rent."
"Right."
This was in reference to Melania's delay in moving from New York City to the White
House during the early days of Trump's presidency. She reportedly chose to do
this so that their son Barron could finish school, but the amped-up security required
for her to stay in New York required a significant financial burden on taxpayers.
Author and media personality Dan Savage didn't hold back when he offered his thoughts about
Melania Trump. But unlike a lot of other people on this list, he didn't speak about the Be Best
initiative or the controversial jacket. As he put it on a 2017 episode of his podcast Savage Love,
"God knows there's enough hate in the world and I don't want to add to the sum total,
but forgive me, I have got to get this off my chest: I f---ing hate Melania Trump."
What makes Savage's critique different from many
others is that it had nothing to do with her husband. As he also noted,
"I'm not alone in loathing Donald Trump's third wife — she's married
to a misogynist after all. Odds are good her husband hates her too."
Savage also pointed out that Melania often gets cut some slack because of her looks. As he put it,
"There are some folks on the left who not only don't hate her,
they view her as some sort of sympathetic figure. The pretty princess in the tower
locked up by the orange ogre with the bad combover, a princess desperately blinking
out distress signals during swearing-in ceremonies and inaugural balls."
But Savage stressed that Melania has complete autonomy over herself as opposed to being a
helpless victim. He also made his thoughts clear back in July 2016 when he tweeted,
"Let's not think too hard about the work Melania Trump has done to realize her dreams."
Jimmy Fallon had an intense back and forth with Donald Trump after the former president
made one particular appearance on The Tonight Show. We're talking about the
time during his presidential campaign when the late night host famously tousled Trump's hair.
Some people were upset about this, because they felt that Fallon was
being too playful when he should've been covering more significant political issues.
Trump for his part jumped on Twitter to respond himself to this reaction. As he tweeted,
"[Jimmy Fallon] is now whimpering to all that he did the famous 'hair show' with me (where
he seriously messed up my hair), & that he would have now done it differently because it is said
to have 'humanized' me — he is taking heat. He called & said 'monster ratings.' Be a man Jimmy!"
Fallon then responded in turn, as he announced:
"The president of the United States went after me on Twitter.
So Melania, if you're watching, I don't think your anti-bullying campaign is working."
It's worth noting here that Melania's focus on bullying was ostensibly to help children
around the world, and it was also based on her own experience. As she claimed to ABC News in 2018,
"I could say that I'm the most bullied person in the
world. [...] One of them — if you really see what people are saying about me."
Nevertheless, that didn't convince Fallon to take it easy on her.
Actor-comedian Jane Lynch took umbrage with Melania Trump's infamous
"I Really Don't Care. Do U?" jacket and took to Twitter to voice her displeasure. As she put it,
"Is FLOTUS so unfamiliar with English that she doesn't know what the back of
her jacket today says? That her initiative [Be Best] is grammatically incorrect? Is
there NO ONE ON HER STAFF to help her with these things?"
Another Twitter user echoed back what Lynch had to say by replying,
"As for someone who is a spouse to a 'world' leader she should know
better than to use her platform in this manner."
Lynch's tweet brought up an interesting theme in Melania's time as First Lady,
as she had a notably smaller staff than previous women. For instance, her direct
predecessor Michelle Obama's staff salaries reportedly cost an annual $1.24 million a year.
Meanwhile, since Melania operated with such a small crew, her staff's combined salaries
reportedly added up to a total of $486,700. Right-leaning media reported on this as a
financially savvy move on Melania's part, but the reduced staff did point to other issues.
The Be Best initiative had a hard time achieving any notable success,
and this could've been partly attributable to the lack of staff support. And the
controversy with Melania's jacket also had people asking why she didn't have advisors
offering her help. But had she wanted a larger staff, she certainly could've asked for one.
Chelsea Handler makes no effort to hide the fact that she isn't exactly a fan of the Trump family,
and her disdain extends to pretty much every member, including Melania.
No surprise then that she was yet another celeb who called
the First Lady out for her controversial jacket. As she tweeted on June 21, 2018,
"The hypocrisy of [FLOTUS] going down to the border to speak broken English
to our refugees in that dumb jacket is a little hard to swallow. For all the trump
supporters who defend her by saying she speaks five languages — English isn't one of them."
Handler faced a bit of backlash for insulting Melania's speaking abilities.
Some felt her tone was anti-immigrant and overly critical of something that has nothing
to do with political policy. Nevertheless, this wasn't the only time that the comedian
spoke out about the former First Lady. During a 2020 episode of Watch What Happens Live, host
Andy Cohen asked her what she would want to ask Melania and Ivanka Trump, to which she responded,
"I just want to shake them, violently,
is what I want to do. I want to shake sense into them. I don't want to ask them anything."
But then Handler ultimately did come up with a potential question.
"I would ask them to please try and imagine what it's like to stand up for women."
Dame Helen Mirren expected more from Melania Trump as first lady. As for her husband,
she believed that we got what we expected. As the British actress told Allure in 2017,
"[Trump] just said and did whatever it took to get what he desired. That is quite terrifying,
because it means there's a lack of morality there and a lack of conscientiousness."
Mirren also had some beef with the Republican Party at large. As she put it,
"That was the horror of the Republicans: They thought that he was actually a bit of
a secret New York-y-type liberal who was quite cool with gays getting married, wasn't he?"
But Mirren also said that the Trump presidency was so shocking that people are going to have
to move on from the cycle of constant rage eventually. According to her,
"It's a bit like watching a car crash. There is
a sort of mesmerizing horror — it's why we love horror films."
Regarding her thoughts on the First Lady, Mirren explained,
"You look at old Mel there, and she is one of the most powerful women in the
world because she could take him down. She almost did that with the hand."
At this point in the interview, Mirren mimicked the infamous moment when the
Trumps landed in Israel and Melania smacked her husband's hand. Mirren then added,
"I'm Eastern European, you know; [we've] got these dark souls. That dark Slovenian
soul is about to come out. She’s only got to do a nice interview with Allure."
Just like everyone else on this list, Patricia Arquette didn't
hold back her disdain for the Donald Trump presidency. As she told The Guardian in 2022,
"It's shocking how much destruction to the democracy he was capable of doing in such a
little time. I just feel like we're in the middle of a never-ending emergency triage in America."
Arquette also explained,
"I like a low-drama lifestyle. I like drama in my work, on screen,
but I don't care for it in real life. I feel like my life is very drama-free."
Arquette's criticism also extended also to the former First Lady, as she was yet
another member of the chorus taking aim at that jacket. As she tweeted on June 21, 2018,
"Melania Trump attempts her fashion spin on let them eat cake! Meanwhile toddlers
are locked in cages. This administration is a who's who of Classless bottom dwellers."
A few minutes later, she followed that up with,
"Melania Trump just won worst dressed for the century."
Melania did eventually end up explaining her jacket choice, as she told ABC News,
"I didn't wear the jacket for the children. I wore the jacket to go on the plane and off
the plane. And it was for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me."
"I don't care. You could criticize whatever you want to say,
but it will not stop me to do what I feel is right."
Busy Philipps also wasn't having it when she saw Melania Trump wearing her Zara
jacket while she was on her way to discuss children being held at the border in Texas.
In fact, she posted a selfie on Instagram of herself wearing a T-shirt displaying the
opposite message of "I Care. Do U?" And in her caption, Philipps wrote,
"I made a shirt! Because I do care deeply. I hope you do, too. Not caring is super lame,
once you're past the age of oh, say 12? Go to familiesbelongtogether.org to learn more
about how you can help in this humanitarian crisis happening right now in our country."
She also added an urge to be active on Election Day by imploring her followers,
"Show up November 6."
And Philipps wasn't done calling out Trump's apparent ambivalence about family separation.
The very same day, she tweeted,
"Also. F--- the message that NOT CARING is somehow 'cool' or 'on trend'.
I care so much and so deeply about so many things sometimes it physically hurts.
That's what it means to be an empathetic human."
The responses to Philipps' message were full of like-minded reactions,
with many wondering why the First Lady, who typically wore high-end fashion,
would choose to wear a $39 jacket, especially one with such a loaded message. For Philipps,
this was an opportunity not just to criticize, but also to rewrite the script.
Kathy Griffin endured quite the tumultuous time after she tweeted a photo of herself
holding a gory Donald Trump look-alike head in 2017. What appeared to be blood on the Trump
head was actually ketchup, but it still led to a bit of an uproar. As Griffin noted to CBS News,
"Well, I didn't have any fake blood. I usually don't stock it!"
As for Trump himself, he tweeted at the time,
"Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children,
especially my 11-year-old son Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!"
Griffin really bore the brunt of THE backlash, as she lost gigs and her tour
stalled. Her entire career essentially flatlined, even though she apologized.
And it wasn't just the former president who called her out, as Melania made a statement that said,
"As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you
consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this
is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it."
Griffin got the chance to speak with Extra later that year,
and when asked about Melania, she offered this sharp reply:
"I think there's a lot of people in this administration that seem, like,
super nuts, and I think it's weird that you guys or anybody's acting like they're not."
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