Jon Wiener: From The Nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense. I’m Jon Wiener.  Later in the hour:  Melania has published a memoir, it’s called “Melania,” where she revisits plaigarizing Michelle Obama for her speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and wearing that jacket that said “I don’t care, do U?”when she visited INS detention camps for children separated from their parents at the border.  Amy Wilentz will comment on her explanations— and on the rest of the book.  But first: Are Black and Latino voters really “drifting”? Steve Phillips has our analysis – in a minute.

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Latino and Black voters in swing states, we are told, are “drifting away from the Democrats.” But is the evidence here convincing? For our analysis we turn to Steve Phillips. He wrote the bestseller Brown is The New White: How The Demographic Revolution has Created a New American Majority. He also hosts the podcast Democracy in Color and he writes for The Guardian, The Washington Post and The Nation. His book, How We Win the Civil War: Securing A Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good is out now, updated for this year’s election. Steve Phillips, welcome back.

Steve Phillips: Thanks for having me.

JW: Let’s start with Black voters. The New York Times headline October 12th read, “Black Voters Drift from Democrats Imperiling Harris’ Bid.” They reported Trump was winning 15% of Black voters in swing states compared to only 9% four years ago. And they said that could, “doom her candidacy and make Trump president.” But a few days later, NBC reported a different poll conducted by Howard University with a much bigger sample of Black voters in swing states. That poll has Harris beating Trump 84 to eight among Black voters in battleground states. That’s about the same as Biden’s 2020 margin among Black voters. What do you make of these different poll results?

SP: Well, it just needs to be said, frankly, that The New York Times was not good at polling Black people. And so, they have had this problem before. And so, they came out in November 2023 with similarly alarmist findings about how voters of color in particular, Democrats in general, were drifting away from the Democrats and Democrats were in trouble. Two days later, they had the midterm, not the midterm, we had the 2023 elections and Democrats almost ran the table, including in Ohio with the abortion ballot measure where 82% of African Americans supported that measure. So they continue to be contradicted by actual voters and yet because it’s The New York Times, we think it’s truth in gospel. And so even in the current situation that they’re showing 78% of African Americans supporting Kamala Harris and their poll, which they then take as truth in gospel. But even just on that level, you mentioned one poll, CBS, their YouGov poll shows Harris’s Black support at 87%. So is the problem with Black voters or is the problem with the non-Black people at The New York Times polling Black voters?

JW: Okay, so you don’t think Black voters will doom Harris’s chances of winning the election. How about Latino voters in swing states? The New York Times recent headline, that’s October 13th, read, “Harris Struggles to Win Over Latinos,” because, “Latino voters said they were open to Trump’s immigration policies and hungry for change.” And nationally, The New York Times chart showed Trump had the support of 37% of Latinos. If you look up four years ago, Trump in that same poll had 36%.

SP: First of all, it’s very important that we contextualize all of this. Even with that, those numbers, even if you were to accept them, they’re still showing the majority of Latinos supporting Harris. So are any of the voters of color dooming Harris or is it white voters? The majority of non-college educated whites are supporting Trump. That’s who is his core of support. So it’s quite fascinating that The Times completely gives a pass to that sector of the population and then tries to rest all of the responsibility on voters of color.

So there is a less visceral response among Latinos than there is among African Americans, because she’s not Latino. The African American we saw it right away in terms of those Zoom calls, 40,000 African American women, and then tens of thousands of African American men within a matter of hours. And you’re seeing it in the numbers. The billion dollars raised, the 10,000 people showing up at the Atlanta rally, that was her first rally after becoming the nominee. So all of the African American core support is there and that’s what’s driving this transformation.
The majority of Latinos are also with her, but that is an area where Democrats have not done well and they continue to try to straddle this line around immigration. It’s not even just immigration, but that sends a signal around how strong are you going to fight for that community? And so it’s a bit of a trickier tightrope to walk but I do think they’re investing great time and energy and effort and I think that ultimately that she will do quite well there.

JW: Let’s talk about Arizona. Polls show Trump is now ahead there by two or three points. The New York Times says that’s, in part because of his support among Hispanic voters. Of course, Biden won Arizona in 2020 by what? 10,000 votes, three tenths of 1%. 25% of the electorate in Arizona is Latino this year. Remind us about the new voters in Arizona.

SP: The majority of people under 18 in Arizona are people of color, largely Latino. So those are the people who are coming into the electorate as it diversifies. That’s largely the Latino population, and that’s largely what is being organized and mobilized by groups such as LUCHA and other community-based organizations. So you have that reality. And then again, The Times, it’s really frankly just the hubris of being The Times. And so they start with their poll as the baseline and as an unshakable picture of reality, but it’s not. The picture of reality is who actually voted. And so in the actual election in 2020, Joe Biden won. So that’s your starting point. So then you have to ask the question, are people who voted for Joe Biden switching over to vote for Donald Trump? And then you ask the next question around — how is the electorate different than it was in 2020? Those questions aren’t being answered.  Then, are you in favor of the Democrats and in favor of Harris?

JW: Arizona is a state where Democrats and their allied groups have a massive door-to-door effort that’s been underway for months. The allied groups there include Arizonans for Abortion Access, campaigning for that abortion rights referendum, and several major labor unions, the most important of which is Unite HERE Local 11 and their political arm Worker Power. They report they have knocked on more than 930,000 doors. They’re aiming for a million. They’ve already held more than 170,000 conversations with voters. You also mentioned LUCHA has a huge door-to-door operation. Is there anything on the Republican side that comes close to what the Democrats and their allied groups are doing in Arizona? What do we know about the Trump ground game in Arizona?

SP: That’s a very underappreciated aspect of the analysis of what’s actually going on, is that they’re not doing a lot and they’re not investing a tremendous amount of money. Harris has like three times as many staff people on the ground in the battleground states as Trump does and they’re ceding this effort to like Elon Musk or whatever his super PAC thing is. But these are not entities that have deep ties in those communities and have proven organizations in terms of doing voter mobilization and turnout. The Democratic ground game is far more organized and meticulous and effective than the Republican, but people don’t want to dig into that reality. But we are seeing that also in some of these early vote numbers.

JW: The Guardian reported they had received a leak from this Elon Musk PAC, America PAC, that has taken over the Trump ground game in the state of Arizona. The Guardian reported that the Elon Musk ground game, they said nearly a quarter of the door knocks done by America PAC seem to be false. This is what happens when you have hired door-to-door people who are not part of your movement.

SP: Right. Democrats and progressives can hope, and one of our strongest sources of hope, should be that Elon Musk runs this independent expenditure as well as he’s running Twitter. And that he’s not good at running things. He’s very wealthy and people mistakenly confuse that with being an operations expert, which he is not. It’s very nitty-gritty, operational, data-specific, person-to-person work. And that’s not what Trump or the Republicans or Elon Musk are expert at.

JW: Of course, the Republican campaign, since they don’t have a majority support in Arizona and nationwide, their effort has focused significantly on reducing the voting population with voter suppression laws. And in August, the Supreme Court sided with Republican demands in Arizona to require proof of citizenship for voter registration. What do we know, what do you think, about how much that might reduce the Democratic vote and the Latino vote in Arizona?

SP: That remains my largest concern in the election because I think all the data, all the numbers show that there is – I call it a, New American majority. And the proof of that is how ferocious the right is in terms of trying to stop people from voting. And so, they’re both going to try to stop people from voting. They’re going to try to throw votes out. There’ll likely be a big post-election contest around this. Which is why it becomes so important to have groups like Worker Power, have groups like LUCHA, who have the people who both have the relationships in the communities and who have the door-to-door, deep-rooted capacity to connect, make sure people’s votes are cast properly, make sure everyone gets out. It’s a very labor-intensive endeavor. But the good news is that because both Harris has raised so much money and there’s so much enthusiasm among Democratic donors that a lot of that work is being funded, which is what’s necessary to overcome the voter suppression.

JW: LUCHA recently reported on a big study they had completed of Latino voters in Arizona. A lot of people were surprised to see that the number one issue for Latino voters was not immigration. The top three issues were healthcare, jobs, and housing, not immigration. Does that surprise you?

SP: No. I mean, LUCHA found in 2016 when they were surveying their members that the issue of economics and economic security. And so that’s what led them to put together and advance a statewide ballot measure to raise the minimum wage, is that the manifestation of racism in this country is ultimately the racial wealth gap. And people experience that in terms of education and housing and jobs. So that’s another way of looking at that reality through the lens of what people experience most day-to-day.

JW: LUCHA also found that 90% of respondents said they plan to vote, 77% they’re absolutely certain they will vote. That is higher than the national averages and that surprised me.

SP: Yeah, but that’s what we’re already seeing. So again, with The Times what their little polls are missing are the actual voter behavior, so the actual people turning out the vote. Georgia set historic records in the first day of voting in Georgia. North Carolina is setting historic records, the early turnout. In Michigan, you’re seeing African American women in particular turning out early in large numbers. So the enthusiasm is very, very strong and palpable, and it’s not surprising. And I think that we’re going to see that throughout the course of this election.

JW: One more thing. Protecting the vote tabulation centers in key counties in Arizona. Maricopa County is the home of 60% of Arizona’s voters, 4 million people. It’s one of the biggest counties in the whole United States and one of the swing counties that will determine the result. Arizona has put a lot of work into security for the Maricopa County Tabulation Center. They’ve put in bulletproof glass in the doors and windows. They have two layers of fencing outside. They have security cameras inside and outside the building that will be monitored. They have a fleet of police drones. Rooftop snipers will be standing by. In many ways, the Maricopa County Vote Counting Center has been transformed into a fortress because of the threats they received in 2020. They’ve spent more than $3 million to bolster election security on the election night and the subsequent days. What do you make of that?

SP: It’s absolutely necessary. And it’s encouraging that they see it and that they’re investing those resources and they’re moving in that direction. And it’s a very significant and important for democracy that you have a Democrat, Katie Hobbs, as governor, you have a Democrat, Adrian Fontes, as Secretary of State, who can actually protect the vote. And that this is not the first time we’ve been down this road. My latest book is How we Win the Civil War, where I try to look at the uninterrupted efforts to continue to fight this war.
When you had the end of Reconstruction coming up and then after that election that led to the Hayes-Tilden Compromise where you basically gave the south back, gave the south back to the Confederates, and capitulated to the white supremacists in this country. That was a supremely closely fought election. And people were going to the local election places where they were counting the votes back in the 1800s to try to intimidate the vote count. And so, this has been an ongoing and uninterrupted path of trying to intimidate and beat down the people who are actually trying to count the vote. So I’m delighted that the Arizona leaders are taking all these steps to protect democracy from those who would seek to undermine it.

JW: And more recently, of course, in 2020, we had the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot in the Miami Vote Counting Center, which was organized by wealthy Republicans and did succeed in intimidating and scaring the vote counting staff to go home.

SP: Yeah. And then there were the death threats in Georgia against the vote counters there in 2020. So this is all the behavior of people who are not the majority and who are trying to stop the majority of people from voting. So while it is Democrats who are doing this voter protection work, what they are actually protecting is democracy, and it does require vigilant and meticulous and forceful protection and I’m glad that they’re doing it.

JW: Last question – Trump is such a dangerous person and such a terrible candidate. Why is it so close?

SP: Because the floor for the champions of the notion that this should be a white country is very high and it’s disturbingly high. There is no way that you could have any credible Republican strategist who would go into a lab and say, ‘Here’s who our candidate’s going to be. It’s going to be somebody caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by their private parts. Somebody twice impeached. Somebody criminally convicted in a court of law of 34 felony counts. And this is who we’re going to put forward.’ No one would ever say that. So somebody who’s gone through all of that and still has the support of 46, 47% of the population shows that issues don’t matter, the qualifications don’t matter. It’s a question of what is the vision of what this country should be and who this country should be for? And it’s an unshakable, quite literally unshakable, 45, 46%. That’s the bad news. The good news is that’s less than a majority. So that’s where we stand.

JW: There’s more of us than there are of them. Steve Phillips — you can read him at The Guardian and The Nation. You can listen to his podcast, Democracy in Color. Steve, thanks for talking with us today.

SP: Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

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Jon Wiener: Maybe you heard the news: Melania has written a memoir. It’s called Melania, and it’s number one on The New York Times bestseller list this week. For comment, we turn to Amy Wilentz. She’s best known for her award-winning writing about Haiti for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Nation. She was also a Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker, and she teaches writing in the literary journalism program at UC Irvine.  She’s a 2021 Guggenheim fellow. She’s written many books, including her own memoir – it’s about her move from New York to LA, and it’s called I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen. We talked about it here. Amy, welcome back.

Amy Wilentz: Thank you, Jon.

JW: All writers know that the opening sentences of a book are the most important. You have to show potential readers why they should keep going. Melania’s choice about where to start her book is, I think, a good one: her arrival in the United States for the first time, to work here. But what does she say about how she felt when her plane touched down at JFK Airport?

AW: I’ll just quote it for you. “My heart pounded with excitement.”

JW: And how would you rate that as an opening for a book?

AW: It’s a big cliché. Come on. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. The number of times her heart pounds with excitement in the book are a multitude.

JW: So what kind of book is this? She set up chapter one as the lead-in to what we call an immigrant saga, a well-known genre. She starts out in a little town in Slovenia. She ends up the first lady of the United States. Is this an immigrant saga?

AW: Well, it’s not a rags-to-riches saga because she wants you to know, quite frankly, that she was not poor in Slovenia. Her parents were both working jobs and they were pretty successful. But it’s an immigrant saga because we know it’s an immigrant saga. And as far as revelation about what it’s like to be an immigrant or how it feels, she conveys that by telling you that it was exciting, and it was really exciting, and every time something exciting happened, it was exciting. But it’s not a tell-all book, so it doesn’t have that sort of cheap, venal, reveal-everything gossip aspect that people love so much.  But it also has no insight or comment, so you don’t get that rich immigrant story that you get with so many other memoirs. And I have read many, many memoirs.
I teach memoir at UC Irvine, and I judged the first memoir prize given by the Pulitzer Foundation. So I know what I speak of when I speak of memoirs. I’ve read them all, from memoirs of hair transplants to memoirs of spouses dying of cancer. I’ve read them all. And this one is a nothingburger, as we like to say when we’re teaching our students. Except for that it’s about Melania Trump.

JW: We come to this book knowing that there were three great personal crises in her public life. She plagiarized Michelle Obama in her speech to the Republican National Convention in 2016. The second one was when she wore that jacket that said, “I really don’t care, do U?” on her trip to visit children separated from families at an INS detention center at the border. And third, not saying anything when Trump’s followers stormed the capitol. I want to ask specifically what she says about each of these. What does she say about plagiarizing Michelle Obama?

AW: She blames the people who vetted her speech, who wrote and vetted her speech. She says she wanted her speech to be really authentic. And then she goes on to tell you how the team wrote the speech, and then she read it and made a couple of changes and she had exchanges with them about what she wanted to say. And then she plagiarized Michelle Obama—because, she said “Oh, I liked Michelle Obama’s speech.” So they stuck it in, she says.  I am sure all that is true, but she blames someone else for it. She doesn’t say, ‘I wasn’t careful enough.’

JW: Her second crisis was as she left for her trip to visit children separated from families at the border. She wore a jacket that said on the back, “I don’t really care, do U?” You and I and everybody else were puzzled about what she was saying with this. We talked about it on this podcast, and we didn’t really have any idea. What is she saying now about what she wanted us to think about that?

AW: She said that visiting the children had been criticized by the media as a stunt to promote her sympathy and her good personality, and she resented that. So she wore this jacket saying that she didn’t care what they thought. She really did care about the children. But how dumb can you be? That’s not exactly the message it sent, and I still don’t know what to believe about this.

JW: And then the third crisis came on January 6th, when Trump’s followers stormed the capitol, and she didn’t say anything. Now, in this book, she says of course she is “against violence.” But why didn’t she say it then?

AW: Her assistant, Stephanie Grisham, texted her on that day and said, “Do you want to say something about the violence?” And Melania said, curtly, “No” in her reply text. However, Melania now claims that she was busy decorating the White House and doing things for the American people and hadn’t looked at the television and didn’t know what was going on on January 6^th — which is unbelievable — and that she only looked later. So she said “No” because she wasn’t really paying that much attention. Again, it’s a sort of ‘come on!’ situation.

JW: Yeah, what she said, I love this line, “I had organized a qualified team of photographers, archivists, and designers to work with me in the White House to ensure perfect execution” of the changes that she had completed at the White House. And so they were absorbed with working with these qualified archivists. You don’t find this convincing. Getting back to her reason for not saying anything, she blames this on her press secretary, Stephanie Grisham. What does Stephanie Grisham say about this?

AW: Stephanie Grisham says, If Melania wanted to condemn the violence at the time, she would’ve asked further questions. Rather than just saying no. She would’ve said, ‘Wait, what are you talking about?’ But she didn’t ask. She just said, ‘No, I don’t want to condemn the violence.’

JW: So who do you believe here, Stephanie Grisham or Melania?

AW: Well, I happen to believe Stephanie Grisham – because I always side with the worker against the boss, and because her explanation is more believable than Melania’s. Stephanie resigned on that day, and she endorsed Kamala Harris recently, and spoke at the DNC. So I think we know where Stephanie stands now about this person and this couple.

JW: The book does contain one big revelation – that Melania supports abortion rights. Do you read that as a criticism of her husband?

AW: I can’t read anything in this book as a criticism of her husband because she’s so consistently enthusiastic about his achievements: his devotion to the American people, his houses, his golf clubs, his taste, everything about him is perfect, his love of Barron. All of this is perfect. So I don’t think this is a criticism of him. It’s a difference of opinion, I think she would say.

JW: And then there are some unavoidable topics that everyone wonders what she’s going to say about. What does she say about Stormy Daniels?

AW: Nothing.

JW: What does she say about the Access Hollywood tape about pussy grabbing?

AW: No mention.

JW: What does she say about the E. Jean Carroll, the trial, and the verdict?

AW: She maybe never has heard of E. Jean Carroll.

JW: What does she say about Mike Pence, who was the vice president for four years until January 6th?

AW: No Mike Pence.

JW: One critic wrote, “The way she writes about Ivanka and Jared, it’s not clear that she has actually met them.”

AW: You could say that about almost everyone in the book. But yes, it’s not clear that she’s actually met them. When she discovers herself pregnant with Donald Trump’s child, she says to him upon his return home, once she’s gone to the doctor, she says, “You are going to be daddy.”   And it’s as though he has not already had the experience of “being a daddy” — with four other children.

JW: Four other children.

AW: “You are going to be a daddy.”

JW: We’ve had a lot of criticisms here. I wonder if you’ve had any favorite passages in this book.

AW: Well, I have an exemplary passage, perhaps, not a favorite because they’re all so much the same and in the same vein. But I just think this is interesting, and it struck me as sort of paradigmatic and an example of what goes on in the rest of the book. This is at the time of her beginning her modeling career in New York, “Although I faced rejections in my career,” she writes, “I remain dedicated and fiercely focused on my goals. I took risks, fearlessly guided by my youthful courage. In hindsight, I realized –” Okay, big revelation – “I realized that it was this boldness that paved the way for my triumphs.”
So the way I feel about that is, well, first of all, there’s no interiority in this person. There’s no revelation that she’s willing to make about herself. Nothing. There’s no generosity in this book. But also, she’s from Slovenia and she grew up just after the end of the Soviet Union. And there’s a Soviet feeling in this passage and so many passage — of the valiant, courageous worker striding toward the sun, scythe in his hand, bravely, courageously, fearlessly into the future. That’s Melania Trump. She probably is brave and courageous in her way.

JW: Was there anything interesting about her romance with Donald?

AW: He waited to ask for her number until his date of the evening got up. That was interesting. And then she refused to give it to him. She said, “Give me your number.” So he called over his bodyguard who takes out a piece of paper and writes out two numbers on it. He doesn’t even know his own number. She does call him, and she does go on a date with him where he shows her his 280-acre Bedford, New York mansion. She’s pretty impressed. She could tell he was a businessman.

JW: That’s what she says. She could tell he was a businessman.

AW: A businessman or a celebrity. She had no idea who he was, she claims.

JW: We should say a few words about the photo section, which in its way is remarkable. Maybe two dozen color pages, each of which has three or four photos. I was struck by the fact that there’s at least 30 photos of herself before she met Trump.

AW: Yes. This is not a person without an ego. I think this is not a person without a fan club. I believe that she has her own serious followers who like her and don’t care that much about her husband, just like Jackie. There were just people who were mad for Jackie Kennedy. I think there must be people who are also on the other side from me because I was a little girl when Jackie Kennedy was around, and I loved her. Okay, I’ve had thoughts about her since, but I loved her. And I think there must be girls like that who love Melania, but they’re Republicans.
It’s a great section. Really, it’s worth the price of the book — practically because the rest of the book is not worth much. But this tells you a little bit more about her character, what she thinks is important: her dresses, her relationships with photographers, her relationships with designers, her mother. Her mother was a very pretty woman.
She was a gorgeous child. She was in fashion shows when she was like eight years old in Slovenia, and there’s a beautiful section of photos from her first photo shoot as a model in Slovenia when she is like 16 or 17, and they’re lovely and show a teenage girl at that point of life. And then it goes on, and then it gets less lovely and more venal and more crass in the photo sections, but still a lot of pictures of her and Donald and the more formal pictures. And I think people love this. There’s the famous Annie Leibovitz photo when she was actually a fashion model married to Trump, the famous photo of when she’s on a stairway up to an airplane, very pregnant and almost naked.

JW: Her love of a Barron is one of the major themes of this book.

AW: She loves Barron very much. He is a wonderful child. He’s brave, fearless, he goes through a lot because he has to, because he moved to the White House, et cetera. And she respects him very much. I mean, never has anything been said that’s less interesting than the things she has to say about this incredible saga she’s lived through.
I’m sure she’s a more interesting person in reality than she is in her book. It almost feels as if all these people have ghostwriters, but in this one, you feel like her ghostwriter is an artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT helped with the work, except for the fact that there are many grammar mistakes, which I, as an English professor, noticed. But it reminds me of my students’ work when they have AI as their helper.

JW: Her predecessor in Trump’s married life, Ivana Trump, wrote a memoir that you and I talked about a few years back. How does this one compare with Ivana’s memoir?

AW: Ivana is almost equally circumspect about Donald. One assumes there was a financial arrangement with the divorce and an NDA, and you just don’t know. But her revelations about her own personality, her relationship with her parents, her relationship with her children, her relationship to material wealth and well-being are all much more exposed. There’s humor. She had a human ghostwriter, and this book lacks that kind of self-mockery and attempt to engage the reader.

JW: Ivana’s book had that one unforgettable anecdote about when she gave birth to their first child, and when he was a few minutes old, she proposed naming him Don Jr. And what did Donald say?

AW: He said, “I don’t know. What if he’s a loser?”

JW: This is in Ivana’s book. Is there anything remotely similar to that in Melania’s book?

AW: What a good father he is to Barron, how he pays attention to Barron. He’s always around for Barron. Maybe it’s true, but we don’t really see that, and we don’t see Barron responding to that either, whenever on those rare occasions we see Barron.

JW: A couple of years ago we did a segment on this podcast about the “Free Melania” period where people were saying she was sending out signals that she was resisting her husband. What do you think about that now?

AW: Now I think she’s hoping for another four years in the White House in the spotlight. I don’t think that she has contemplated abandoning him as long as that goal is visible before her eyes. And she feels somewhat cheated in her term in the White House because of COVID. She couldn’t go to all the parties. She couldn’t go abroad. She didn’t meet the Queen of England. There were problems in her tenure in the White House the first time, and I think she’d like to be in the White House again. Now, what will happen to that marriage if he doesn’t win? I can’t say. Maybe there’ll be “Melania 2” as a book.

JW: In conclusion, what is your assessment of Melania’s memoir?

AW: I think it is the worst memoir I have ever read, and possibly the worst memoir ever written. It’s 181 pages and you don’t know her any better by the end. You don’t understand her life anymore by the end than you might have before. You can come to it with whatever opinion you want about her and end up with that same opinion, I believe. So that’s a sign of a not very great memoir.
And she always seems not to understand anything about politics. She says, “Our nation stands at a pivotal moment. We have a choice, to be torn apart by violence, hatred, and division, or to unite in a spirit of love, kindness, and shared humanity. It is critical that we choose the latter before it is too late.” Now is she saying – this could be part of the”Free Melania” discourse—

JW: Yes, it could.

AW: ‘You must vote against my husband’?  Or is she saying that Donald Trump stands for ‘a spirit of love, kindness, and shared humanity’? If so, she hasn’t been watching the clips.

JW: Amy Wilentz – Amy, thank you for reading Melania’s memoir, and thank you for telling us about it.

AW: You’re welcome, Jon.