You can leave the Miss Universe pageant, but it never leaves you.
Thursday morning, President Trump gave French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte Macron, what might come to be called the “Trump once-over.”
The moment came when the two world leaders met for the first time of Trump’s trip to Paris to celebrate Bastille Day. As cameras clicked around them, Macron, Trump, and their wives smiled and embraced.
Trump then took a step back and appraised Brigitte, looking her up and down. “You’ re in such good shape, ” he said to her, apparently assuming such an assessment would be seen as complimentary, rather than inappropriate or even predatory. He then turned to her husband and offered up his appraisal again: “She’s in such good physical shape.”
The moment recalled the president’s recent appraisal of Irish journalist Caitriona Perry in the Oval Office.
In that instance, Perry, a longtime Washington watcher, was called to the president’s desk while he was on the phone with Ireland’s recently elected prime minister.
“Come here, come here, ” he called out to Perry, who was with the press gaggle. “Where are you from? We have all of this beautiful Irish press.”
Parading Perry in front of her colleagues, he praised her “nice smile.” Perry later called the moment “bizarre.” Others called it objectifying .
It seems no woman, no matter her station, no matter how official, no matter how much she might be, you know, married to the president of France, is safe from Trump’s inappropriate appraisals.
