Bulwark Takes - Melania's VERY Weird, Tone-Deaf Letter to Putin

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Tim Miller takes on Melania Trump's bizarre letter to Putin, asking him to “restore the melodic laughter” of children — without once mentioning Ukraine. 

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I feel like you deserve a dramatic reading of something. I haven't done a dramatic reading in a minute. Trump's third wife, the first lady of the United States, Melania, Trump put out a letter. Melania, maybe the secret weapon here that Trump needs after he made no apparent progress during the Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin. We are on the eve of Zelensky coming to. the United States flanked by a bunch of European leaders, I think it's a smart strategic move

to ensure that Donald Trump doesn't try to embarrass him again or bully him. On the eve of that, we see this gambit, I guess, let's call it, from the first lady. How should we describe it? It's very strange. I would say that it was plagiarized, but it reads like, it's much more likely that it was AI slopped and plagiarized. It certainly does not read like she's copying some rhetoric from somebody else. It's because it's a little too strange for that. There's a little bit of an ESL vibe to it. And I guess you should say also in this context, Melania,

I don't know if I can even get out Melania to her credit because I just, I can't with Melania. But supposedly she's been talking to Trump about how Putin's continuing to bomb and attack Ukraine and how there have been civilian deaths and children's deaths. So this desire to make a public statement to Putin seems to come from that. Now, again, if we felt like, if Trump felt confident about his negotiating skills,

if he felt like coming off of the Senate with Putin, that he had made a lot of progress and the Putin was likely to start to stand down and get ready to come to a deal, or maybe he removes his troop from the troops from the country that he's been raping and pillaging for the last few years, you wouldn't maybe need a statement like this. But anyway, that's enough for the windup. I know you guys want me to get right to it. The letter from Melania Trump to Vladimir Putin on the First Lady's letterhead, it begins. Dear President Putin, every child shares the same quiet dreams in their heart, whether born randomly into a nation's rustic countryside or a magnificent city center.

They dream of love, possibility, and safety, and safety, as parents it is our duty to nurture the next generation's hope as leaders the responsibility to sustain our children extends beyond the comfort of a few here in my gilded country club in south florida undeniably we must strive to paint a dignity-filled world for all so that every soul may wake to peace and so that the future itself is perfectly guarded. It continues. I wish I could do the monny voice. A simple yet profound concept, Mr. Putin, as I'm sure you agree, is that each generation's descendants begin their

lives with a purity and innocence which stands above geography, government, and ideology. I'm going to return to that in a second. Yet in today's world, some children are forced to carry a quiet laughter, untouched by the darkness around them, a silent defiance against the forces that can potentially claim their future. Mr. Putin, you can single-handedly restore their melodic laughter. Oh, Mr. Putin, only you can restore their melodic laughter of children's laughter.

We're almost done, I promise. In protecting the innocence of these children, you will do more than serve Russia alone. You serve humanity itself. Such a bold idea transcends all human division. And you, Mr. Putin, are fit to implement this vision. with a stroke of the pen today. It is time. Melania.

Strange that Melania has stolen Donald Trump's signature. Very weird. It's kind of like, I guess, when sorority girls get on the same period, Melania and Trump now their signatures have merged, have blended into one. Anyway, boy, a lot to unpack there. Lots to unpack there. I want to start with two observations. One, I do love the passive voice about who these children are that she's talking about.

There are these children out there that have been forced to carry a quiet laughter. I'm not sure what a quiet laughter is, but they've been forced to carry it because of the darkness around them. And it's like, who has forced them to carry the quiet laughter? Is there somebody that has forced that? What would that person's name be? Who is that? Because I presume we can't know for sure because the other important observation here is that Melania does not use the word Ukraine anywhere in this letter. So we're forced to presume, I guess, she's discussing the Ukrainian children who have not merely been forced to laugh quietly.

actually, they've been kidnapped by the Russian aggressor, and they've been murdered. The ones who have survived, who have not been kidnapped and brought to Russia or murdered by their indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, the children that survive in Ukraine, they, to the extent that they have to carry a quiet after, I don't believe that they do. Actually, you see a lot of videos from Ukraine where people are soldiering on with good humor. But the kids that have survived, like, whatever has been thrust upon them, whatever challenges that they've been forced to face, whatever danger they've been exposed to, they've been exposed to because fucking Vladimir Putin decided to invade his neighbor for no reason beyond his own megalomania and desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union. so like Vladimir Putin is the one that has descended the darkness around them there is no it's not as if this is just some some situation like that happened like somewhere out there in the world there are some kids that

just caught bad luck and then they ended up in this place where it was dark and they weren't able to laugh and and Vladimir Mr. Putin comes in and signs his pen he could save them and so we We have to appeal to his conscience. We have to appeal to his good-naturedness and his empathy because he, as the leader of Russia, has the power to save these children that, for some unknown reason, have had these horrors thrust upon them. That is how this letter is written, and that is not what has happened. Vladimir Putin is abusing them, torturing them, attacking them, trying to murder them, stealing them from their families.

and so he can stop that from the with the stroke of a pen because he's the one that is responsible like a simple yet profound concept to borrow a phrase is that Vladimir Putin is the one who's chosen to torment the children of Ukraine and the person responsible is also responsible for stopping it. And I don't think that an appeal to his concern about the babes in the woods and their melodic laughter is probably the way to do it, you know? And I think that this would be something that a conservative foreign policy hawk would have mocked relentlessly, had it been written by Michelle Obama or Dr. Jill Biden.

Dr. Till Biden, you would have, uh, did you like, oh, oh, Mr. Putin, Mr. Putin, please be kinder, please. When, when they go low, you go high, Mr. Putin. I mean, it's just like, what? I mean, that would be just a liberal would be eviscerated for putting out something this naive and, and just frankly, embarrassing. And so we should eviscerated. Melania for it as well. I know Melania is being very litigious these days. I'm not going to comment on anything about her or her background unrelated to this specific letter in case you're wondering, but she has been very litigious when some other people have been making some other claims about her. You could maybe see her on YouTube. I just, I want to go back to one other part of the letter. Yeah, you know, you hate again to over-amilize something that very possibly We might have been written by GROC, but I want to also go back to that simple yet profound concept.

Melania says this, each generation's descendants begin their lives with a purity and innocence, which stands above geography, government, and ideology. That claim actually is fundamentally at odds with MAGA republicanism and with and with Vladimir Putin's view of the world. So it is simultaneously hypocritical and a really dumb appeal to Vladimir Putin. Because Vladimir Putin does not actually think that the descendants of Ukrainians are unmarked by their geography and their government and their history. The whole point about this is that Vladimir Putin believes. that Mother Russia is the culture and the government that should subsume all of the other

surrounding countries that were once occupied by the USSR on a map. So, like, and in MAGA, this whole idea of blood and soil nationalism, you talk about, I mean, J.D. Vance did the Ordo Amores talk the other day, about how you have to care more about people close to you than people far away than that there is a ranking of love that you have to have and that you rank the children further away lower than the children closer to you because of proximity and because of blood and soil and nationalism and family and also they're bullshit nonsense so like yeah I agree with the simple and profound concept that every generation's children should have equal opportunity

to achieve their dreams, no matter their geography or government or ideology, because I'm a fucking globalist leading heart chill. That claim, that profound concept that Melania put forth is anathema to what her husband and her husband's administration want to put forth. Just as the purpose of this letter, presuming that had a purpose was to convince Putin to find a heart. Oh, please, Mr. Putin, won't you think of the children? Please, Mr. Poo, this is like a combination of Ned, what was Ned Flander's wife,

Ned Flander's wife, Mrs. Flanders, and, you know, the appeals to the Grinch for his heart to grow three sizes larger. Oh, please, Mr. Grinch, don't you have a heart? You know, it's just like that's the level of, of argumentation here. If you're going to make an appeal, I don't understand why you would make an appeal to from a blood and soil nationalist to a blood and soil nationalist. that he should not care about the geography in which these children are born. He should care about their dignity and human, you know, their human dignity equally.

Putin doesn't care about the human dignity equally if people no matter what their geography is. He does not think, actually, that each generation's descendants begin their lives with an equal purity that stands above geography. He has an extremely acute interest in geography, as a matter of fact. and so does your husband and his fucking white nationalist cadre of goons. So anyway, it's a silly little letter from Melania Nouse. Nose, Nose, Trump. She's a silly little person, though. So it's not that surprising she'd write a silly little letter.

But I felt it's worth sharing because I don't, you know, it doesn't seem like they hang out that much. But I am pretty sure that the Trump team would have. have an oversight over whether something like this would go out. And it betrays a weakness about their status and their negotiations with Putin. Betrays that Vladimir Putin is the one in a position of strength here as these guys so desperately flap around in hopes that Donald Trump can get a Nobel Peace Prize out of this. I think, well, you'd call it in poker. It's a tell.

I think this is a tell as we go into tomorrow's meeting with Zelensky and the European leaders about the level of desperation. you're seeing on the American side of this so-called negotiation. So that's what I got for you. Was it worth 15 minutes talking about the Melania Trump letter? I think so. I think so. I don't know who I'm looking at.

There's nobody else here. I think so. It's my channel, you know, and I got a kick out of it. So I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think in the comments. Subscribe to the feed. We'll be back tomorrow with Bill Crystal with a little more serious talk. And I should mention Bill Crystal.

Talk to Eric Edelman, who does our awesome Shield of the Republic podcast. If you're looking for astute foreign policy analysis from people who have expertise and experience shielded a public podcast and Bill Crystal's conversation with Eric Edelman, I would recommend highly. If you're looking for like a little bit of expertise and some hot takes with some laughs, keep it right here with me. We'll see you guys soon. Bye.