Yesterday, the Daily Beast went after Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Today, it's the first lady.
It's just the same old same old: the media's war of snide comments and speculation against women who do not toe the liberal line. The Daily Beast sent a reporter to Slovenia to dig durt on Melania Trump.
What the reporter found was really shocking: it seems that Mrs. Trump is extremely popular in her hometown. The horror! The resulting article is headlined "Inside the Cult of Melania Trump."
Cult is a loaded word, but it gets worse. Beast correspondent Anna Nemptsova is not above trafficking in a little inuendo if needed to smear Mrs. Trump:
So people here are proud. Especially in the old Communist times, when Melanija Knavs was born on April 26, 1970, who’d have thought such a thing possible? Her past, her present, and her future generate endless anecdotes and all sorts of speculation. Indeed, there’s almost a cult around Melania, but it’s more about the idea of her than about the woman herself. Townsfolk say she hasn’t been back here in at least a decade.
The writer offers this as a possible explanation:
One of her local biographers, Bojan Pozar, suggests “either her immigration paperwork has some hidden dark sides or something terrifies her in Slovenia.” But he doesn’t offer specifics. Back in 1992 Melania moved from Slovenia to work as a fashion model in Austria, Italy, and France. An ambitious woman, it seems she decided to draw a line between her past and future and never come back to her life in Slovenia.
Hot Air, which provided the helpful bolding, comments:
Keep in mind that this is coming from no less reputable of a source than, er… Bojan Pozar. This is the same Bojan Pozar who is apparently a blogger and published author. His books include Melania Trump: The Inside Story and, um… “Making Melania Trump.” And that’s about it.
His expert commentary is that “her immigration paperwork has some hidden dark sides“. Or… something terrifies her in Slovenia. What are these deep dark secrets in the First Lady’s immigration papers? Pozar doesn’t know. What is it about returning to her home town which frightens her so? Pozar doesn’t’ say. In fact, he has not only zero details to offer, but not even a hint of any speculation as to what these damning secrets might be. Nothing.
But that’s good enough for some outlets like the Daily Beast to run with it, apparently. And hey.. why not? It’s probably a slow news day and you can only talk about Jared Kushner for just so long.
This is not actual reporting, but all too many media outlets seem to have decided that in the Age of Trump, actual reporting is no longer necessary.