Melania Wears Jacket Reading ‘I Really Don’t Care, Do U?’ To Child Detention Center

Melania Trump, visiting a child immigrant detention center Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer June 21, 2018

First Lady Melania Trump loves a good coat.

To her husband’s inauguration, she wore a powder blue Ralph Lauren suit coat.

In Italy, she chose a colorful Dolce & Gabanna jacket.

She is known for draping coats imperiously over her shoulders — for this she likes Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Delpozo, Gucci, and Givenchy. It’s rare to see her in an item of clothing, much less a statement coat, that retails for under $2,000.

Yet on Thursday, on a visit to a shelter in McAllen, Texas, where children who have been illegally separated from their parents are being held with no knowledge of when or if they will see their parents again, Melania Trump wore a $39 jacket from the fast-fashion brand Zara. On the back of the jacket, the words: “I don’t really care. Do U?”

Here’s an image of the jacket from the Zara website:

This is what Melania wore on her trip to the children’s detention centre today. I wish I was kidding. #flotus #melaniajacket

A post shared by Andrea Clarke (@aclarkewithane) on Jun 21, 2018 at 11:28am PDT

Heartless? Clueless? Slyly subversive?

The brand, cost, appearance, and message of the jacket represents an enormous departure from Trump’s normal look. We cannot possibly guess at what the First Lady can mean by wearing it.

“It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message,” Trump’s communications director Stephanie Grisham told the Daily Mail. And she’s right, there is no hidden message — it’s a visible message written clearly and legibly. “After today’s important visit to Texas, I hope this isn’t what the media is going to choose to focus on,” Grisham added.

But we can’t do Grisham or our first family that favor. It seems, in a moment when tiny children are being forcibly separated from their parents and imprisoned, there is no limit on the number of indefensible, inexplicable, mortifying things we can witness.

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO