Yesterday, the Hannity show aired footage of Melania Trump’s December 12 visit with troops while falsely suggesting she had done so during the holidays. This, of course, was before today’s surprise announcement that Donald Trump finally decided to go visit troops in Iraq.
Melania, as you may know, originally had no intention of letting the Trump shutdown or the fact that thousands of government employees will be working without pay over the holidays get in the way of jetting down, at our expense, to her opulent vacation at Mar-a-Lago. But, a day later, she changed her mind and flew back (also at our expense). However senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner apparently see no reason to refrain from kicking back in the lap of luxury while Daddy Donald keeps others from getting a paycheck.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump followed up his Veterans Day and World War I remembrance snubs of the troops with another on Christmas Day. NBC News noted yesterday, “Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn’t visit military personnel around Christmastime.” And “At this point in their presidencies, Obama visited troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush visited Iraq just eight months after the start of the war in 2003.” While I was cutting and pasting those quotes, it was announced that Donald and Melania made a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq and had left Washington last night.
But whether Fox News had advance notice or not, the footage the Hannity show aired last night was from December 12, nearly two weeks before Christmas. Although the date briefly appeared on the screen periodically, a banner continuously read, “FIRST LADY VISITS THE TROOPS FOR THE HOLIDAYS.”
It’s a good thing Trump finally got around to visiting the troops, especially since their beloved Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, was just pushed out, two months ahead of his planned resignation, in a fit of pique. Here’s hoping someone asks Trump about that diagnosis of bone spurs that saved him from his own service and that today we learned was almost certainly fraudulent.
Meanwhile, watch Fox News misleadingly suggest Melania Trump had already made a Christmas visit to the troops below, from the December 25, 2018 Hannity.