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Melania Trump Liked A Tweet About Her Frosty Marriage

by Cate Carrejo
Win McNamee/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The first lady has taken a non-traditional role far away from the spotlight, but when she does make headlines, boy, does she know how to do it. Melania Trump favorited a tweet speculating about her relationship with her husband, and either it's some epic shade she's throwing, or an uproarious mistake. Although she shortly unfavorited the tweet, it still might be revealing of the secretive first lady.

The tweet in question was posted Tuesday by progressive political commentator Andy Ostroy, whom Trump does not follow on Twitter. "Seems the only #Wall [Donald Trump]'s built is the one between him and [Melania]," Ostroy wrote, attached with the now infamous GIF of Trump's apparently forced smile at her husband during the inauguration. A separate screenshot posted to Twitter by Gizmodo writer William Turton showed that Trump apparently liked the tweet within an hour of its posting, but the tweet had disappeared from her likes page by the following day.

Of course, any ideas about why Trump liked the post are pure conjecture. For all the world knows, she was just trying to bookmark it to have a laugh about it with the president later. Yet the perplexing social media move pretty conveniently fits into a narrative that has been swirling for months, that the first lady is, in some way or another, a passive participant in her own marriage. Some speculate that she's a "prisoner by choice," dealing with an inconsiderate husband and assuaged by her luxurious surroundings and social status. Others extrapolate some classic symptoms of an emotionally abusive relationship between the Trumps, leading them to think she's more psychologically trapped than willingly stuck.

A lot of these theories are built around Trump's social media presence, which obviously isn't a perfect barometer, but so little is known about her otherwise. In fact, it was kind of reassuring to see some action on her social media page — before the presidential campaign, Trump was a big tweeter, but her personal account has completely fallen off in the last few months.

When she married a businessman, she never signed up to be a politician's wife, and her less-than-warm embrace of the role of first lady indicated that she was hesitant to expand her role in the spotlight. Hopefully this means that Trump is easing into her new identity and feels comfortable opening up again, even if it's not in the way that America has come to expect from its first ladies. Whatever her motivation for liking the tweet, Trump at least gave the country a good laugh.