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Chelsea Handler Is Lightening The Mood

by Amée LaTour

It's been an intense election for most Americans. Comprised, for many of us, of disproportionate parts hope and fear, excitement and disappointment, we could all use a laugh now and then at the absurdity of this past year and eight months. Election Day is not only not an exception, but perhaps the day when most of us need a mood-lightener the most. Comedian Chelsea Handler took to Twitter to give us something to laugh about. Handler's tweet about Trump looking over Melania's shoulder at the polls might give you a much-needed chuckle.

Donald showed up with his wife on Tuesday at a polling location in Manhattan's Upper East Side to vote for himself, while crowds served up both cheers and boos to the... unconventional... candidate. In one photo of the event, Donald appeared to be peaking over into Melania's voting station, as if to verify that she was, in fact, voting for her husband. Whether that's what he was actually doing or not, some tweeters took the occasion to poke fun at the Republican nominee. Handler got in on the mix, throwing back to Melania's Republican National Convention speech that raised suspicion that the prospective first lady had taken a bit too much inspiration from the current one.

Following Melania's speech, there was much scrutiny concerning similarities between it and Michelle Obama's speech to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. And sure, the similarities were striking. At the time, the fuss surrounding it threatened to bury a much more important conversation regarding what fresh hell was unleashed upon the American people at the fear-mongering convention. It can also be said that scrutinizing the word choice of a non-native-English speaker, particularly when those words were likely written by a speechwriter, is perhaps off-base.

But the dust has cleared and the conversation has moved on. Handler's throwback is now an innocuous bit of fun, used to suggest that Donald has reason to fear that his wife may have voted instead for Hillary Clinton, as we can trust Obama has. Although there's no shortage of derogatory comments regarding women in the Republican nominee's past, the recent leak of an audio recording in which he says that famous men can just walk up to women and grab their private parts put a serious dent in the campaign.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

If Election Day's got you down, let yourself laugh a little at the absurd, the inane, and the silly. We don't know if Donald really peaked over Melania's shoulder at the polls, but it's sure funny to think he might have.