Cast your minds back to January (if you can bear it) and you might remember that one GIF from Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States really seemed to capture the popular imagination.
The clip in question showed the new First Lady, Melania, smiling at her husband, before he turns away. Then, she drops her smile entirely and replaces it with a far less cheery expression once Trump’s back is turned. Quickly, this small, throwaway moment racked up hundreds of thousands of shares on social media, and spawned a meme that has kept on giving throughout Trump’s first 100 days in the Oval Office: #FreeMelania, the hashtag which posits that the First Lady is not all too happy about her new role and, hypothetically, about her marriage in general.
Of course, ‘Free Melania’ is pure speculation - and as anyone who suffers from Bitchy Resting Face will understand, it’s all too easy to find yourself caught off guard with a face like thunder – though a recent Vanity Fair article suggesting that Trump asked his wife to promise to ‘get her body back’ after having a child has certainly added fuel to the social media bonfire.
Yesterday, however, Melania’s official personal Twitter account @MELANIATRUMP (rather than the White House @FLOTUS handle) ‘liked’ a tweet from writer Andy Ostroy, showing the infamous inauguration GIF and bearing the caption: ‘Seems the only #Wall @realDonaldTrump’s built is the one between him and @FLOTUS #Melania #trump.’
This was the second ever Tweet to be liked from the @MELANIATRUMP account (the first is one of Melania’s own messages from back in 2012, saying ‘Hello Twitter!’) and naturally, the like was quickly undone.
Eagle-eyed social media users, however, were quick to screenshot the evidence for posterity. Ouch…
While Melania’s mishap is certainly an awkward one, it’s also worth remembering that the likelihood of the First Lady scrolling through her dormant Twitter isn’t very high: it’s far more probable that the FLOTUS outsources both her accounts to a social media manager (who is surely about to be called into a meeting right about now…) The White House, meanwhile, are yet to comment on the news…
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