Say what you like about Melania Trump, she has done an incredible amount during her time in the White House. She renovated the bowling alley she revamped the Red Room, she broke ground on a private tennis pavilion. Now, the indefatigable first lady is trying her hand at horticulture: on Monday, Trump announced that she is overseeing a renovation of the White House Rose Garden. “Planting a garden involves hard work and hope in the possibility of a bright future,” she explained.
More than 150,000 Americans have died with Covid-19 and the pandemic is nowhere near under control in the US. Nearly half of adult Americans are jobless and 28 million are facing eviction. Heavily armed citizen militias are patrolling US cities and protesters are facing off against federal troops in Portland, Oregon. The US is a huge bin fire and Trump is weeding while it burns. Is the woman completely tone-deaf or is there a strategy behind her sudden passion for gardening?
One school of thought is that she has looked at the 2020 election polls, realises her days at the White House are numbered and is rapidly legacy-building – or, perhaps more accurately, legacy-plagiarising. The image-obsessed Trumps have not exactly been subtle about their attempts to portray the first lady as a latter-day Jackie Kennedy, with Donald Trump once announcing: “We have our own Jackie O – it’s called Melania, Melania T.”
Trump – or, as her husband likes to call her, “it” – has already mimicked Jackie O’s fashion choices, but now she is appropriating her floral ones: a White House statement about the plans noted that the rose garden will be restored to the design first implemented during the Kennedy administration.
The first lady’s attempts to restore the past seem to be working, albeit not in the way she may have intended – shortly after the rose garden renovations were announced, “Marie Antoinette” started trending on Twitter. While Melania T may be attempting to channel Jackie O, it looks as though she can’t help giving off strong Marie A vibes.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
