A new conspiracy theory has emerged via Twitter guy @JoeVargas, who has it on pretty good authority that Melania Trump is using a body double.
This theory, though quite certainly incorrect (the woman is having a slightly weird hair day, chill out), is just plausible enough to hit home.
After all, although she wholeheartedly signed up for this, has Melania given off the impression that she is enjoying life right now? Did she, or did she not, recently record a PSA that felt disturbingly like a hostage video? Does she seem to like standing next to her husband, in general? Do bizarre, poorly thought-out decisions get made literally every day at this White House? Alternatively, would I believe it if someone told me that we are living in a crude video game developed by an alien teenager titled Hell Time, and that there is in fact a Westworld-esque army of Melania Trumps standing at the ready in a cellar below the White House? (I might!)
As you may remember, during the 2016 election a similar theory floated around pro-Trump and Russian troll social media accounts concerning Hillary Clinton, who was said to be—in addition to a murderer and a criminal—flagrantly concealing her dramatically failing health via a body double. In Clinton’s case, of course, this added to an endless, conspiracy-dotted list of reasons why the presidential candidate was Unfit To Serve and a Liar and a Weak, Disgusting Woman dying of Uranium-Benghazi-Soros-Clinton Foundation disease.
In Melania’s case, though, would anyone really blame her if she, say, padlocked herself to a bannister in the executive residence and ordered her chief of staff to hire a rotating crew of professional clones to smile in a trench coat and sunglasses on her behalf? The half-serious theory that she is being played by a body double just proves that we want our First Lady to be reasonably crafty, and also that we’ve all gone completely insane.