Is she Melania? Or is she an imposter?The popular internet conspiracy theory that first lady Melania Trump often does not travel with Donald Trump and instead uses a body double resurfaced last week during a photo op for the president and his wife in Alabama. The woman in the photo looked quite un-Melania-like, and the body-double accusations became so prominent that Trump himself claimed that the images were photoshopped.“The Fake News photoshopped pictures of Melania, then propelled conspiracy theories that it’s actually not her by my side in Alabama and other places,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “They are only getting more deranged with time!”Trump is talking about a picture showing himself and the totally real Melania standing next to each other while holding hands.
Advertisement
The photos that the first lady herself tweeted from Alabama do not show her face directly, which only further fueled speculation that she was not actually there.
Even The View chimed in on the speculation Monday with an entire segment in which the show’s co-hosts examined photos of Melania in Alabama. Apparently the first lady — wherever she is — was outraged by the body-double speculation. Her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, tweeted a rebuke to The View, accusing the show of laughing “in the face of tragedy.” (Trump and Melania were visiting Alabama to survey the damage caused by a recent tornado.)
Trump presumably decided to tweet about the controversy after Fox News, an entity he is known to spend more time with than his wife, ran story on The View’s Melania segment.Cover image: U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stand before a row of crosses honoring 23 people who died in the storm outside Providence Baptist Church March 8, 2019 in Opelika, Alabama. (Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)