President Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive in Tel Aviv. They are flanked by Israel’s president and prime minister and their spouses. (Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images) 
 
 If public appearances by a president and first lady are political theater, first lady Melania Trump and her husband, President Trump, miiight want to work on their choreography. 
 
 A brief moment caught on camera during the first couple’s arrival at the Tel Aviv airport appears to show the president reaching behind him for his wife’s hand — and she seemingly swatting it away. Or maybe, upon close inspection of the footage, perhaps she just missed grabbing his outstretched hand, like a trapeze artist flubbing the catch. 
 
 Rebuffed, POTUS smooths his tie. 
 
 The couple’s efforts at hand-holding have long fascinated White House watchers. (“Donald Trump ‘avoids holding Melania’s hand in public because he wants to look like a presidential alpha,’ says body language expert,” was the headline of a Daily Mail story from February.) Others tagged videos of the botched attempt at hand-holding with the hashtag #FreeMelania. 
 
 This latest bit of awkwardness, even if it was just a meaningless goof, is likely to just give such narratives, uh, legs. ||||| Maybe Melania Trump, a woman who was once photographed for Vanity Fair forking a bowl of expensive necklaces as though they were spaghetti noodles, has more in common with the average American than we initially thought. Like the average American, it appears that she too, cannot stand her husband. 
 
 This afternoon in Tel Aviv, President Donald Trump reached for his wife’s hand. Rather than indulge him with human touch, the sort of human touch regular married people who like each other might engage in, the reluctant First Lady swatted his hand away. This wasn’t done backstage before an event, or in the privacy of a place where it was safe to assume there weren’t any cameras. No, Melania has grown bolder in her push to telegraph her disdain for Donald. She did it as she and her husband joined Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife in a photo op. She did it in front of a veritable United Nations of news cameras. She did it so the whole world could see. She doesn’t care if he’s embarrassed, and it completely rules. 
 
 And the whole world did see; within minutes, the moment had gone viral. With that swat, Melania had temporarily sated the public’s bottomless appetite to see President Trump denied what he wants in its most viscerally appealing manifestation. Trump wanted his wife to accept him, to join him in acting like a normal human couple for the cameras instead of an orb-fondling wannabe despot. Seeing tweets about a judge striking down an immigration ban, or watching a Trump surrogate make an ass of themselves on cable news just doesn’t taste as delicious to a victory-starved liberal as the image of a woman slapping Trump’s hand away. For the millions who continue to be horrified by the Trump era, there’s nothing more zeitgeisty in 2017 than Trump schadenfreude porn. And there’s nobody more well-positioned to deliver it than our Ice Queen First Lady. 
 
 This isn’t the first time Melania has denied Donald’s undersized hands the pleasure of human touch. In January, when the couple arrived in Washington for his inauguration, Donald tried to hold his wife’s hand just before completing the very scary task of going down a flight of stairs. Melania was not having it. 
 
 That move kicked off an inauguration weekend that, told from Melania’s perspective, would read like a novel about a tragically trapped princess, or a live-action Pepe Le Pew cartoon starring Melania as the cat. When the couple danced, Melania leaned away rigidly. In every public appearance, the impeccably dressed First Lady wore a veil of despair. Her husband often seemed to forget that she existed. When they kissed, they did not touch. Melania acted like a mascot of left-wing despair. 
 
 In the ensuing weeks, Melania’s public disdain for her husband only intensified. An US Weekly cover story declared that she was “secretly miserable” as First Lady, an account I must dispute since it’s always been obvious that she’s miserable. She skipped out on typical first lady duties when the prime minister of Japan visited. And a couple of weeks ago, whoever manages her verified Twitter account favorited a Tweet about how alienated the Trumps seem from each other. 
 
 All of this is occurring as Trump’s daughter Ivanka performs most of the non-romantic duties of First Lady, delivering speeches and posing for photos. In recent interviews, Ivanka’s even started putting on a strange Jackie O affect. If I were Melania, I’d find the whole thing irksome. 
 
 Critics will point out that Melania, of course, is no hero, and no saint. She’s the one who married Donald, and she can leave whenever she gets sick of living in a golden box in the sky and feeling sorry for herself. There are plenty of women whose lives are much more worse off thanks to the president, and plenty more whose lives would be worse off if not for the saving grace of checks and balances. But her public acting out provides a nice bit of levity for a time that often feels devoid of it; a lot of women would love the opportunity to swat Trump’s hand away. 
 
 Melania’s swats also serve to expose another Trump lie: when you’re a star, they don’t always let you do it. ||||| Donald and Melania Trump’s relationship has hit the headlines over the past week for all the wrong reasons; a lack of hand holding, weird body language and the resurfacing of the ‘Free Melania’ hashtag. 
 
 But the couple has a long history of strange body language and awkward encounters that have left people speculating about how much the pair actually like one another. 
 
 Melania's face while dancing with Trump reminds me of the first time I went to the gynecologist pic.twitter.com/ilgyUWH3aC — Sofiya Alexandra (@TheSofiya) January 21, 2017 
 
 One awkward moment between the pair prompted social media users to start the hashtag #FreeMelania, after video from the inauguration showed Melania’s face falling after Donald turned round to speak to her. 
 
 The inauguration prompted several widely shared examples of Donald and Melania’s seemingly unusual behavior, with Donald appearing to leave his wife outside the White House as he marched in—leaving Barack and Michelle Obama to escort the incoming first lady inside. 
 
 Later, during the pair appeared extremely awkward during their inaugural dance as president and first lady at the Liberty Inaugural Ball—in stark contrast to the Obamas’ inaugural dance in 2009. 
 
 Perhaps this could be forgiven based on the gravity of the occasion—particularly given the rumors Melania was not keen to assume the role of first lady despite her husband’s presidential ambitions—but their awkwardness has continued at other public events. 
 
 Meanwhile the Free Melania hashtag has been used on t-shirts, at women’s marches and by a number of comedians, many of whom have suggested the first lady should flee her husband. 
 
 Most recently, the pair’s body language during Trump’s first foreign trip since his inauguration has been circulating in mainstream and social media. 
 
 Footage emerged of Trump appearing to have his hand swiped away by his wife as they arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel on 22 May. 
 
 The pair was filmed in a similar situation days later in Rome, when Melania moved her hand to tuck her hair behind her ear just as Trump reached for her it. 
 
 Just weeks prior to the hand-swiping incident, Melania appeared to give her husband a quick elbow jab at the White House Easter Egg Roll, when he failed to put his hand on his chest during the national anthem. 
 
 Unsurprisingly pictures of the pair behaving awkwardly in public have promoted comparisons between the couple and former president Barack Obama’s relationship with his wife Michelle. 
 
 Indeed, Obama’s former photographer has started trolling the Trumps by sharing images of the Obamas acting warmly towards one another in contrast to the Trumps’ body language. ||||| In Washington today, two people who definitely like each other and regularly interact in real life attempted, with limited success, to hold each other's hands in front of cameras. 
 
 “I know I’ve been an absentee dad and a horrible husband - including flagrant affairs while you were pregnant - but let’s just hold hands at this event...” pic.twitter.com/gLDCs40iCk — Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) April 24, 2018 
 
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 Captured on MSNBC's coverage of French president Emmanuel Macron's visit to the White House by Shannon Watts on Twitter, the video shows the American president apparently attempting to signal his wife that he wanted to grasp her hand by repeatedly tapping her brusquely, much like regular people who have regular person experiences all the time. 
 
 Michael Cohen's second most problematic client first brushed his claw against the first lady's hand, a gesture of romance so overwhelming that she ignored it, opting to stare directly forward with the force of someone who is just doing her job and doesn't need to be distracted. He then tried to tap her with his index finger like a middle schooler on a first date at a screening of Avengers: Infinity War, testing the waters to see if this was a good moment for some butter-fingered hand-holding. It was not. 
 
 The first lady, in a wide-brimmed white hat like Olivia Pope except the exact opposite, did not get the message, so the president resorted to lightly worming his pinkie finger into her palm like an unsubtle Russian bot showing up in your timeline bearing a conspiracy theory and a donation link. 
 
 Regular person stuff. Getty Images 
 
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 Apparently the third time was the charm, as the first lady's immobile hand was successfully grasped by the president's in a show of national and connubial unity that captured the heart of the nation. 
 
 The president, of course, is known for his unsettling relationship with his hands, having engaged in a hand-shaking battles in the past. Among the contestants: 
 
 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe 
 
 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; 
 
 French president Emmanuel Macron 
 
 More recently, he has resorted to simply holding hands, as seen here with British Prime Minister Theresa May. 
 
 Getty Images 
 
 And earlier today, with Macron. 
 
 LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 When reached for comment, body language experts called the president's hand habits, "a heartbreakingly beautiful extension of his romantic businessman soul" and "just about as unsettling as literally everything else." ||||| First Lady Melania Trump had another awkward hand-holding moment with husband Donald Trump on Tuesday as the first couple welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, to the White House for the Trump administration’s first state visit. 
 
 In footage captured by MSNBC and later dissected by Twitter users, Trump appears to make a subtle effort to hold his wife’s hand, first extending his pinky finger and then gently giving her hand a little shake before she finally places her hand his. 
 
 This isn’t the first time Mrs. Trump has appeared reluctant to hold her husband’s hand. In May, the first lady was caught on camera clearly swatting away her husband’s hand during a trip to Tel Aviv, Israel. Then in February, as the first lady and president departed the White House for a trip to Ohio, Trump once again tried but failed to make hand-to-hand contact with his wife. 
 
 On Tuesday, Twitter took note of the Trumps’ latest awkward hand-holding moment. 
 
 That moment when your wife resists holding your hand… PRICELESS. 🤣🤣 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/hDpPddTv5C — BetsyBits (@BetsyBits) April 24, 2018 
 
 Trump attempts to hold Melania's hand at President Emmanuel Macron's arrival at the South Lawn: pic.twitter.com/NlBlcdZ29s — Braxton (@braxtonryn) April 24, 2018 
 
 Look at poor #Melania right hand trying to tell #Trump that he didn’t dig deep enough. — Sam (@SamMusaed) April 24, 2018 
 
 Trump's attempt to hold Melania's hand is EVERYTHING: pic.twitter.com/t7yqNGpJym — Braxton (@braxtonryn) April 24, 2018 
 
 Poor Melania, she loomed like she was holding back tears under her hat as she held Trump's hand — Daring Reporter (@DaringReporter) April 24, 2018 
 
 “Look at poor #Melania right hand trying to tell #Trump that he didn’t dig deep enough,” one tweeter joked. 
 
 “Poor Melania, she looked like she was holding back tears under her hat as she held Trump’s hand,” said another. 
 
 The first lady’s white, wide-brimmed hat was also lighting up Twitter on Tuesday. 
 
 JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty 
 
 The striking accessory stole the show as Mrs. Trump and French First Lady Brigitte Macron — both in white skirt suits — joined their husbands on the White House South Lawn for a military welcome ceremony. The first lady’s white suit is from the Michael Kors Collection and costs $2,195, according to CNN. The outlet said the hat was also from the Michael Kors Collection hat, but a new pool report says it seems that “Michael Kors is not taking credit for the hat.” 
 
 On Twitter, people compared the first lady’s hat look to those worn by Beyoncé in her “Formation” music video, Jude Law in The Young Pope and Kerry Washington in Scandal. 
 
 Melania with the Young Pope hat pic.twitter.com/PqwI4bqO9A — Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) April 24, 2018 
 
 How did Melania get Fanucci's hat? pic.twitter.com/ZFZJwazkYm — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 24, 2018 
 
 Is Melania Trump’s white hat a symbol of morality like Olivia Pope’s? pic.twitter.com/JZRHL7iuOi — KOlive (@kmomonahan) April 24, 2018 
 
 Others noticed that while Brigitte Macron managed to expertly kiss both of her fellow first lady’s cheeks beneath the wide brim, President Trump had trouble making contact and settled on air kisses instead. 
 
 Hats off to Brigitte Macron, who just managed a flawless French two-cheek kiss under and around Melania Trump's enormous flat-brim hat. Which is gorgeous. — Anne Rumsey Gearan (@agearan) April 24, 2018 
 
 President Trump Kisses Melania Hat Gets in the Way April 24, 2018 Live Satellite News: https://t.co/bvKsFxG5PK via @YouTube — LiveSatelliteNews (@LiveSatNews) April 24, 2018 
 
 Melania's relationship tips: wear a wide-brimmed hat and your husband will never be able to kiss you pic.twitter.com/eVhzFFEulD — shannon carlin (@new_girl_friday) April 24, 2018 
 
 Joked one Twitter user: “Melania’s relationship tips: wear a wide-brimmed hat and your husband will never be able to kiss you.” ||||| There was no husband-wife hand-holding as President Donald Trump and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, arrived Tel Aviv, Israel, on Monday, the second stop on their eight-day tour to five countries. 
 
 As the Trumps walked away from Air Force One on the Israeli tarmac, the president was seen reaching for his wife’s hand. She then appeared to be swatting the president’s hand away. Israeli newspaper Haaretz shared a clip of the moment on Twitter, and it has since gone viral. 
 
 Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images 
 
 The moment comes not long after the first lady’s verified personal Twitter account liked a tweet about her dramatic change in facial expressions at the inauguration when she smiled, then scowled, after the president glanced in her direction. In his anti-Trump tweet, writer Andy Ostroy joked: “Seems the only #Wall @realDonaldTrump‘s built is the one between him and @FLOTUS #Melania #trump.” 
 
 The tweet was un-liked after Twitter caught on, and Melania’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, later told PEOPLE “The First Lady wasn’t aware of any of this until I brought it to her attention. It isn’t her primary account and we have since changed the passwords.” 
 
 RELATED VIDEO: Exclusive: Natasha Stoynoff Speaks Out: ‘I Don’t Want Women to Feel Afraid’ 
 
 Just ahead of the president’s overseas tour – his first foreign trip as president – the first lady announced her plans to join. 
 
 “I am very excited for the upcoming trip,” the first lady said in a statement. “This will not just be an opportunity to support my husband as he works on important matters of national security and foreign relations, it will also be my honor to visit and speak with women and children from different countries, with different perspectives.” 
 
 After arriving in Israel, Monday, Trump became the first president to visit the Western Wall, reported CNN. 
 
 The first lady and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, also prayed at the wall.
– Innocent flub? Public diss? Either way, President Trump and wife Melania provided an unintentionally buzzy moment upon their arrival in Tel Aviv. Watch it via this video clip from the newspaper Haaretz. It shows the president reaching back to take wife Melania's hand on the airport tarmac and then her, well, not taking him up on it. That has triggered lots of coverage along these lines in the Daily News: She "refused to hold her husband's hand and then slapped it away." A post at the Daily Beast raises the ante on that sentiment. But many also were taking a more middle-ground approach, hedging descriptions of Melania's action with phrases like "appeared to be swatting" (People) or "seems to swat away" (Los Angeles Times). The Washington Post, meanwhile, offered one of the most charitable explanations: "Or maybe, upon close inspection of the footage, perhaps she just missed grabbing his outstretched hand, like a trapeze artist flubbing the catch," writes Emily Heil. She notes that Trumpian hand-holding is a favorite topic of White House watchers, meaning the two ought to at least "work on their choreography" if they want to avoid feeding the memes. (This isn't the first time Melania has seemed to flinch at her husband's touch.)