Dear Melania,
You don’t know me, but I felt I needed to reach out to you.
A while ago you said that you wanted to use your position and platform to stop bullying.
You said you want to protect young people from violence.
You said you wanted to prevent cruelty.
Then you largely disappeared.
I’m not sure if you’ve been offline since then—but things aren’t good here.
Your husband’s trolls are incessantly harassing teenage survivors of a mass murder. They’re using their images in fake memes designed to engender hatred.
They’re deploying armies of bots to call these children communists, and to attack their motives and their sexuality and their love of country.
They are specifically targeting children and exposing them to harm.
Based on what you’ve said previously about such behavior, I thought you’d want to know this and to speak out explicitly.
Given that this was your great stated burden, it seemed the kind of thing you’d be moved by.
If there was ever a perfect moment for you to use your voice for a cause you claim dear to you—it would be this one.
I know you have a young son, and I imagine you’re fairly protective of him; that you hurt when he hurts, that it enrages you when strangers verbally assault him, that tears come when he is unfairly targeted by adults.
And seeing as you’re First Lady, I was hoping you’d be protective of these sons and daughters too; that their hurt would matter, that you would be enraged by the wounds they are sustaining, that their targeting would bring you to tears.
Maybe you don’t see it or you don’t really care or you’re too frightened of your husband to say anything—but you need to say something.
All I know is that children are being damaged—and that you have the opportunity to defend them with one of the largest platforms on the planet.
All I know, is that you do have an audience with the trolls and the bullies and the abusers.
You do have influence with these monsters because of your last name and your title—and whether I believe you deserve the lofty position you’ve been given—you could actually use it for good.
You could be the best version of yourself, and undo some of the toxic filth your husband is manufacturing, nurturing, and amplifying.
You could save young people’s lives with your simple words.
From what I know about the man you’re married to, and from the reprehensible way he’s treated women in the past, you might not feel you can say anything. I suspect you live a great deal of time in fear; that you might be rightly terrified to speak.
But you’re the wife of a sitting President, and that’s far more power than a 14-year old in Florida has to face the bullies and the trolls and the talk show hosts and the senators.
That’s a terror you will never experience.
Like I said, I don’t know you, and maybe none of this means anything to you. These could all be wasted words, falling on deaf ears of someone who (like her husband) doesn’t give a damn.
But I’m hoping that there is humanity there beneath your detached stare.
I’m hoping compassion and goodness still reside in the hidden recesses of your heart.
I’m hoping that the mother in you, understands how sickening it is when children are in danger, and that you really did mean it when you said you wanted to stop people from bullying them.
And, Melania, children are in danger.
They are being bullied.
They are being violated.
They are not safe.
If their lives are worth defending, say something.
If “Being Best” matters—do better.
