For a first lady who has promised to dedicate her platform to the wellbeing of children, Melania Trump proved very slow to respond to the border crisis unfolding over Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and the family separation policy that his administration is using to enforce it. In fact, the first lady’s willingness to stay silent and avoid addressing the crisis has prompted many to criticize her as a modern-day Marie Antoinette, the French queen known for her frivolity. Vanity Fair reported that the first lady had gone “full Marie Antoinette” as the furor over separating migrant children from their parents reached a fever pitch. Many in the Trump administration had had to respond to the crisis. But in Vanity Fair’s estimation, the response that Melania Trump made through her spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, amounted little more to the lament, “This is so bad, I really hate it, if only there were something we could do.” After Grisham delivered that statement, Melania went back to business as usual, even sharing a photograph of herself alongside Spanish monarchs King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia. According to Vanity Fair, “The Marie Antoinette of it all was perhaps inescapable: the two women — one a literal queen from the country that helped colonize Mexico wearing a pink Michael Kors sheath — having tea in the White House’s Red Room.” Melania Trump said that the two discussed “children,” and Americans had to wonder whether the border crisis came up at all. Melania Trump chose to respond to the crisis later in the week, leaving Washington to visit migrant children at a Texas detention center. But as she boarded the plane in Maryland, she wore a jacket emblazoned with the message, “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” The insensitive choice sparked immediate outrage among Americans aware of the careful efforts that Melania Trump typically puts into her outfits. Despite the first lady’s spokesperson stating that the jacket didn’t mean anything, many Americans think it means something. As The Hill reports, CNN analyst Kirsten Powers criticized Melania Trump as the “Marie Antoinette” of the Trump administration. “This is a woman who spends a lot of time very carefully picking out what she’s going to wear,” Powers said. “This was not an accident. This was intentional.” The CNN analyst also said of Melania, “She’s officially the Marie Antoinette of this administration. It should just say ‘let them eat cake,’ that they literally just don’t care about what’s happening there.” Of course, historians say that Marie Antoinette never actually said, “Let them eat cake.” Though it’s one of the most famous quotes in history — “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or “Let them eat cake” — historians believe that the remark would have been uncharacteristic of the French queen, according to History. The queen donated generously to charitable causes, despite her lavish lifestyle. And she showed sensitivity toward the poor (something that many Melania Trump critics likely think the first lady would do more often). Multiple other royals have also been blamed for the callous remark, which had been floating around for years before 1789, when Marie Antoinette is said to have made the proclamation. As History notes, “Whoever uttered those unforgettable words, it was almost certainly not Marie Antoinette.” Meanwhile, the future of many of the families separated at the U.S. border remains uncertain. Donald Trump signed an executive order to stop the practice of splitting children up from their parents. But as The Daily Beast notes, that executive order does nothing for the families whom immigration officials have already separated. More than 2,000 children have been separated from their families, and advocates fear that they will never see their parents again. Read more: This Is How the First Lady Helped End Family Separation at the Border Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!<doc-sep>White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders responded to a sharply critical Washington Post op-ed penned by former First Lady Laura Bush addressing President Donald Trump’s enforcement of border laws. When asked about the president’s reaction to the Bush op-ed, Sanders said that the president shared her concerns and urged Congress to change the laws that were driving the child crisis at the border. “Frankly, this law was actually signed into effect in 2008 under her husband’s leadership, not under this administration,” Sanders said at the White House press briefing on Monday. The law she was referring to was the Trafficking Victims Prevention Reauthorization Act signed by Bush in 2008, which Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said was in need of reform. “This law encourages families to put children in the hands of smugglers to bring them alone on this dangerous trek northward,” Nielsen said during the White House press briefing. “And make no mistake, we’ve talked about this before — this trek is dangerous and deadly.” In 2014, President Barack Obama’s administration also blamed the Bush-era law for the sudden influx of unaccompanied minors at the border. But former First Lady Michelle Obama sided with Laura Bush in a statement on Monday. “Sometimes truth transcends party,” she wrote on Twitter. Sanders pointed to previous administrations for either creating the problem or failing to fix it. “We’re not the ones responsible for creating this problem. We’ve inherited it,” she said. “But we’re actually the first administration stepping up and trying to fix it.”<doc-sep>NEW A vastly improved search engine helps you find the latest on companies, business leaders, and news more easily.<doc-sep>
I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.https://t.co/he1uw1E96A — Laura Bush (@laurawbush) June 18, 2018 WASHINGTON -- First lady Melania Trump "hates" to see families separated at the border and hopes "both sides of the aisle" can reform the nation's immigration laws, according to a statement from her office.Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump, said Sunday: "She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart." She said Mrs. Trump hopes both sides "can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. "While the statement suggested the matter was an issue for Congress, Democratic lawmakers and others have pointed out that no law mandates the separation of children and parents at the border. A new Trump administration policy, which went into effect in May, sought to maximize criminal prosecutions of people caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally. More adults were being jailed as a result, which led to their children being separated from them.A former first lady, Laura Bush, joined the debate, calling the separation policy "cruel" and "immoral" and said "it breaks my heart." In a guest column for the Washington Post, she compared the separation of the children to the internment camps for Japanese-Americans in World War II.She said, "Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. ""I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," Bush said.For both, it was an unusual entry into a fierce political debate.Mrs. Trump didn't refer specifically to the Trump administration's "no tolerance" policy, which was leading to a spike in children being separated from their families. Government statistics indicate that nearly 2,000 children were separated from their families over a six-week period in April and May. Mrs. Trump's spokeswoman issued the statement after several days of images of crying children appearing on television and online.President Trump said Friday, "I hate the children being taken away," but he also falsely blamed Democrats for a law requiring it.-----