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Melania Trumps spent her first few months as first lady in New York, only rarely appearing in Washington or speaking at events. Yet friends and aides say shes keeping a close watch from her gilded apartment in Trump Tower on how her husband is portrayed in the pressand that shes growing increasingly worried about the anonymous sniping from West Wing staff.

Like President Donald Trump, these people said, Melania Trump is an avid consumer of cable news, and often tracks the news of the day and will alert her husband to stories she thinks make him look bad.

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She has raised concerns that some on his communications and press team arent doing enough to defend him, according aides and sources close to the president. Shes been especially troubled by background quotes in which West Wing aides criticize the president, and shes called the president to discuss it.

Her quiet role as private watchdog is at odds with her public persona. Melania Trump has been seen as generally aloof and removed from her husband's political operation since he announced his campaign in 2015, but as his administration has been consumed by infighting and outside investigations, she's grown increasingly vocal about the perceived shortcomings of staff surrounding the president.

Melania loves the president unconditionally, definitely, she really cares about the president, she feels a kind of protection, said her long-time friend and former modeling agent Paolo Zampolli, who introduced the couple in 1998. The main concern to the president and the first lady is that these leaks are unacceptable.

Aides and friends of the president describe Melania Trump as one of the several people he calls at night to hear how the dysfunction in his White House is playing out beyond the Beltway, including billionaire businessmen Carl Icahn, Rupert Murdoch and Chris Ruddy.

For the next week, shell travel with her husband, accompanying him on his first trip overseas, putting her in a position to exert even greater influence over his thinking day to day.

Shes very private and shes very smart. Anyone who thinks shes a mannequin doesnt get it, said longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. She has excellent instincts into who is trying to exploit their influence with him.

In recent weeks, her concerns have centered on White House press secretary Sean Spicer, whose role as an on-camera briefer is expected to change after Trump returns from his overseas trip.

She was really concerned that Spicer was not doing a good job, that they were not proactive in defending the president, said one outside adviser who speaks to the president regularly. The leaks bother her. She believes a lot of people are more interested in serving themselves than him.

Like Donald Trump, perception is key to Melania Trump. She visibly nudged the president to put his hand on his heart during the national anthem at the White House Easter Egg roll in April.

Behind the scenes, she personally reviewed small details at the event, including the Easter bunny costumes worn by staff. One bunny was forced to shed the outfit attached to the costume after Melania Trump said she didnt like it, one aide recalled.

Mrs. Trump is being diligent and thoughtful with a focus on quality and tradition when it comes to her important role of first lady both behind the scenes and in public, said Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trumps communications director. She is staying true to herself and she believes the American people deserve nothing less.

On the campaign trail, Melania Trump made her preferences known and would tell aides when she thought stories or issues could be handled better. She weighed in on controversy when former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was accused of roughly handling a reporter. Former campaign aides say Trump took her opinion into account.

She would consult with us, she would send me things. She was concerned when there was this ridiculous reaction to some of Trumps statements, said former campaign adviser Sam Nunberg. [Trump] would say to us Melania said this, well Melania told me that.

Her decision to stay in New York, where 11-year-old Barron Trump is finishing the school year, has prompted widespread intriguebut her allies are quick to point out that even Michelle Obama briefly considered delaying her move to Washington while their daughters finished school in Chicago after President Barack Obama was elected.

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Melania Trump is expected to move to Washington over the summer with Barron, who will enroll at St. Andrews Episcopal School in suburban Potomac, Maryland.

Shell travel with the president throughout his tour through Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy, and Belgium, hosting events on her own during the first few stops and attending programs for spouses while hes at the NATO and G7 summits at the end of the trip.

Ahead of the foreign trip, the first lady put out 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.

Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to Laura Bush and has been consulting for Melania Trump, pointed to her decision to visit hospitals and schools, following traditional advocacy for first ladies. She wants to be taken seriously, and I think she wants to study this role, said McBride. Its an enormous privilege to her as a new American citizen.

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Melania scours media to protect Trump - Politico

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president last November, many of the billionaires critics tried to convince themselves that he would finally tone down his divisive rhetoricand curtail the unhinged behavior now that he was actually going to be president of the United States. It was a kind of defense mechanism against the utter shock of the situation. Hardly anyone had truly believed that Trump would or even could be elected president, so when he was, many dumbfounded (and terrified) people resortedto self-deception in order to cope.

Of course, many Republicans had similarly deluded themselves earlier in the year, after Trump had managed to win the partys nomination. Now that he was entering the general election as a major-party candidate for president, the reasoning went, he would finally pivot and start acting well, presidential.

We all know how that turned out, of course. After just four months in the Oval Office it should be absolutely clear that President Trump will not be changingany time soon. That is to say, he will not stop tweeting like an unhinged maniac early in the morningor peddling blatant falsehoods and conspiracy theories or revealing classified information to foreign officials in order to boast, or repeatedly breaking democratic norms whether it be personally attacking sitting judges who rule against his policies, or calling journalists enemies of the people. In other words, Donald Trump will not (read:cannot)stop acting like Donald Trump an impulsive, vindictive and unscrupulous billionaire with the temperamentof a pubescent boy.

And at this stage in the game, it is unclear whether Trump will even make it to the one-year mark in office. The New York Times bombshell reportearlier this week,which claims that the president tried to get former FBI director James Comey to drop an investigation into the presidents formernational security adviser, Michael Flynn, suddenly made impeachment (and possibly criminalprosecution)seem like a real possibility.

Over the past week, of course, the heat kept building. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed as a Justice Department special counsel to oversee the investigation into the Trump campaigns apparent connections to Russia. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was revealed to have joked last year, in a recorded conversation, that he believed Trump was on Vladimir Putins payroll. And investigators are now reportedly focusing not just on former close associates of Trump, like Flynn or onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort, but also on people who currently work in the White House.

No longer are genuine calls for impeachment limited to the liberal blogosphere and social media. Major publications and politicians are nowdropping the I-wordand considering whether the president belongs in office.

Weve seen this movie before, saidSen. John McCain, R-Ariz. I think it appears at a point where its of Watergate size and scale.Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., meanwhile,replied in the affirmative when asked by The Hill whether the reported Comey memo might merit impeachment. But everybody gets a fair trial in this country, stated the congressman. A senior official in the Trump administration was even more candid (albeit anonymously) to the Daily Beast, saying: I dont see how Trump isnt completely fucked.

There is no doubt about it: President Trump is in serioustrouble and there is no doubt that he did this to himself. It is hard to see how something like this wasnt always inevitable, considering the kind of man Trump is (and always will be). Over the past four months, theTrump administration has been a constantcircus, with one fiasco after another. Most of these disasters have been entirelyself-made unlike the president himself, whose success is a result of having a wealthy father.

It is absurd to think that anyone imagined that Trump could suddenly change his ways and become a reasonable and level-headed adult. Trump is neither reasonable nor level-headed, and while he may be twice the age legallyrequired to be president, he is temperamentally a child.

The real question now, it seems, is whether Republican politicians will finally surrender to the factthat Donald Trump is a borderline insane person(and possibly a criminal) who deserves to be evicted from the White House. The next questionwill be how severely this monumentaldebacle impacts the Republican Party and the future of American politics.

The GOP is going to be ultimate victim of [Trumps] confidence game, remarks David Faris in The Week.Both the Republican Party and the president are already deeply unpopular, less than four months into his presidency Rather than protecting him from the consequences of every indecency, crime, and provocation, the smarter play for Republicans would be to begin the process of removing the president from office immediately.

Whether Republicans will go this route and it doesnt seem as improbable as it did just a few days ago is asyet uncertain, but they must realize at this point that things arent going to get any betteror calm down as long as this man is president.

The final question that we must all ask ourselves after this real-life tragicomedy has finally played itself out (one hopes before 2020) ishow this deranged and disturbinglyunfit man was elected president and how we can make sure that nothing like this happens again. After the presidency of Richard Nixon, various reforms were passedto crack down on political corruption and limit presidential power.Forty years later, another disreputable president will hopefully inspire another wave of reform.

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Donald Trump will never change: And after a week of farce and fiasco, even Republicans know impeachment is possible - Salon

What does consciousness of guilt look like? How do you know it when you see it? President Donald Trump and his band of kakistocrats seem to be putting on a clinic.

Item: Donald Trump fires James Comey, the FBI director leading the investigation into his campaigns possible collusion with Russia to influence the results of the 2016 election.

Then: Trumps team denies that stifling the Russiagate investigation was the reason for the firingand even finding a patsy in the very malleable deputy attorney general Rod Rosensteinonly to have the cover story contradicted by Trump himself, as he blurted out the truth in an interview with NBCs Lester Holt.

Next: the day after the Comey firing elicits an apparently unexpected backlashwell, unexpected inside the undecorated, echoey mansion inside Donald Trumps headthe president boldly welcomes two key officials from the very country that interfered in our election, Russia, into the Oval Office for selfies and yucks.

The meeting is observed only by Russian state media, since members of the American press were kicked out. During that grip and grin, Trump brags to his guests that he cashiered the nut job Comey because his Russiagate investigation was getting in the way of friendlier U.S.-Russia ties.

But wait, theres more. Turns out Moscow Don cant stop loving on his fired National Security Adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, who reportedly confessed to the incoming administration that he was under FBI investigation for his shady dealings with Turkey and Russia, but got hired anyway.

(We are asked to believe Mike Pence, the head of the transition team, heard this confession and the warnings about Flynn from the then-acting attorney general with his index fingers stuck firmly in his little lamb ears.)

Mr. Lock Her Up even tells friends that post-firing, during the period of his greatest legal jeopardy, Trump has continued to reach out to him telling him to stay strong and even musing that he hopes to re-hire Flynn one day when, in the Wonderful World of Oz that exists deep down inside of Donald, this whole Russia thing blows over.

Now we learn that even before special counsel Robert Mueller decorates his office, the investigation into the dealings between Trump and the Russians has ensnared a senior White House official close to the president as a person of interest. Its not hard to guess who that person might be, and one assumes Jamie Gorelick, whose law firm WilmerHale represents Jared and Ivanka Kushner as well as Paul Manafort has been rather busy.

Incidentally, the firm has a pretty famous partner in its Washington office, namely Mueller, who announced his resignation upon his appointment as special counsel. That may not be good enough for the Russiagate tainted Justice Department, which announced this week that it is launching an extensive ethics background check of Mueller, just in case.

Its all very intriguing, suggesting a presidency that is crumbling before our eyes under the weight of its inherent corruption. And the sheer, leaked disgust of his own team makes it clear that even Trump loyalists understand that there is only one man to blame.

During the campaign, Trump surrounded himself with creatures from the shady foreign cash bog: the Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Rudy Giuliani swamp; along with the Bannonite meme-Nazi fringe. Is it any wonder that his administration is a circus of third-rate political operators, amateurs and deplorables?

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It was Trump who brought the three-ring circus to Washington, complete with his eldest son and Twitter enforcer Biff Tannen, his see-no-evil, pay-no-decent-wages daughter and her son-of-a-felon husband, whose family isnt above hawking foreign corporate visas and whos not so good with his Foreign Agent Registration Act paperwork. Jared apparently does excel at getting the Saudi sweet arms deals with American companies. But his other portfolio item: solving Middle East peace may have to wait until the Israelis get over Trump spilling their intel to the Russians.

Its all a mess, but one that was predictable with the election of a needy and juvenile man who wont read more than a page of bullet points with his name sprinkled liberally throughout to keep him interested, and who brags without thinking in order to make people like himeven if the people are spies for a hostile powerand whos friendlier with the thuggish autocrats of Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines than with Canada.

Whats also clear is that Trump, while not the canniest or most articulate fellow, fully understands that the investigation into his campaign and his friends presents a clear and present danger. He is hugging Flynn close because Flynn could hurt him. He repeatedly tried to recruit Comey into The Family to keep Comey from bringing him down. Hes keeping the whole band of misfits on the ship to keep them from scratching out holes in the hull.

Who knows if Trump fully understood what his team was doing to help get him his precious election win. After November he probably thought making friends with Putin, through the back channels Flynn was setting up, would enable him to set the whole world at peace, making him the Greatest President of All Time (take THAT, Obama!)and also a real billionaire, with Trump hotels, Trump condos and Trump licensing deals strewn the world over, all managed by The Family.

Clearly, Russia thought having Flynn on the inside would be a goldmine of influence for them. (Even without him, they managed to get within bugging distance of the Resolute Desk.)

The problem is that Trump thinks the danger of Russiagate is merely to his plan and to his pride; his desperate need to believe he won the election because of his sheer awesomeness and not through a confluence of unfortunate events. What he fails to comprehend is that the real danger is to his presidency itself, and to the country he doesnt have the slightest idea how to lead.

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Donald Trump Knows Just How Bad the Russia Investigation Can Get - Daily Beast

Variety

Trump Controversies Making Waves in Cannes Variety A week that started with the revelation that President Donald Trump had revealed classified information in a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office has hurtled towards its conclusion at a dizzying pace, with new bombshells hitting within ...

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Trump Controversies Making Waves in Cannes - Variety

Quartz

Donald Trump, would-be peace-broker, fundamentally misunderstands the history of Islam Quartz This weekend, US president Donald Trump is traveling to the Middle East to deliver a speech about Islam. My bet is that within the first half of that speechwritten by the Muslim-baiting Stephen Millerhe'll brag about his yuge election victory ... and more »

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Donald Trump, would-be peace-broker, fundamentally misunderstands the history of Islam - Quartz