Bush aide tears apart Melania Trump's 'un-American' scheme

President Donald Trump’s wife, First Lady Melania Trump, is trying to destroy the First Amendment — and a former Republican presidential adviser just called her out.

“Melania Trump’s demand to fire Jimmy Kimmel seems unsurprising from the first third wife to become an American First Lady in our 250-year history,” Steve Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush, wrote for his Substack on Tuesday. Schmidt’s comment referred to how both Trumps are calling for ABC to fire Kimmel after he joked about Trump’s age, falsely claiming that his joke was somehow connected to the recent alleged assassination attempt against the president. “Severe, unsmiling and brutally indifferent Melania is a perfect match for her husband, who recently declared that he isn’t a rapist or pedophile on ‘60 Minutes.’”

Schmidt’s “rapist or pedophile” comment refers to Trump’s longstanding friendship with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Dozens of women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1980s.

From this perspective, Schmidt argued that the Trumps’ attempts to silence Kimmel and their other critics are both transparently self-serving and un-Constitutional.

“Melania Trump’s demand is un-American,” Schmidt wrote. “The former model, who was reared in a Slovenian backwater under a communist government, seems ill-acquainted with the First Amendment to the Constitution.” He also showed a photograph from Trump’s first term of the First Lady visiting a detention center with imprisoned migrant children wearing a jacket saying, “I really don't care. Do u?" The political strategist expressed disgust that the Trumps are indifferent to the suffering of others, including suffering they caused, but demand empathy for themselves.

“Indifference isn’t passive,” Schmidt wrote. “It’s active. It’s a choice.” And from there he transitioned to the “selective outrage” that the First Lady displayed by focusing only on defending herself rather than using her platform to help others. He also pointed out that, even if one wanted to argue the First Lady cares primarily about kindness (which she claimed during Trump’s first term), she does not extend that agenda to anyone other than herself.

“Where was this sensitivity when her husband mocked a disabled reporter?” Schmidt asked. Where is it when he hurls insults at women, journalists, immigrants, and political opponents? Where is the call for accountability then?”

He added, “It doesn’t exist because the standard isn’t principle. It’s loyalty. It’s self-interest. It’s grievance. The rules apply only in one direction. Criticism of them is unacceptable. Cruelty by them is excusable — sometimes even celebrated.”

This is not Schmidt’s first blast at the Trumps for blaming Kimmel for the alleged murder attempt. Earlier this week he explained how Trump and his supporters need to take accountability for their role for causing the violence against them.

“It isn’t random,” Schmidt wrote. “And no matter how loudly the MAGA movement insists, it isn’t the fault of Donald Trump’s critics. The argument that criticism of Donald Trump somehow incites violence against him isn’t just wrong. It’s an inversion of reality so brazen that it demands to be confronted directly.”

He added, “Because over the last decade, no figure in American life has done more to normalize violent rhetoric than Donald Trump,” from trying to violently overturn the 2020 election after he lost to regularly urging violence against politicians and journalists who criticize him. Yet when AlterNet reached out to the White House about Schmidt’s earlier editorial, they doubled down.

“Vile political rhetoric like this is extremely dangerous and life-threatening,” White House spokesperson Allison Schuster told AlterNet. “It’s unhinged commentary like Schmidt’s that inspires political violence, and he should be especially mortified of his words given this weekend’s egregious attempt against the President and others in his administration.”