The Press Box - Where in the World Is Melania Trump? | Damage Control (Ep. 478)

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

The Ringer's Justin Charity and Kate Knibbs try to understand why there are so many conspiracy theories around the lack of public Melania Trump sightings (0:52) and how the first lady is different from both her family and her predecessors (4:37). They also discuss the rap beefs that are currently ruling the music world and how people remain entertained even as the public spats turn violent (17:20). More from The Ringer: Solitary Confinement: Seriously, Where—and Who—Is Melania Trump? Rap Beef Emergency: Drake vs. Pusha-T Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Kate Nibbs. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites, and divides us in popular culture. A tale of two rap feuds. This week we're going to talk about Drake, Pusha Tea, Chief Keefe, and Takashi 6-9,

and their respective escalating conflicts. But first, we're talking about Melania Trump, the missing First Lady, whose disappearance from public view for the past few weeks inspired a lot of admittedly silly conspiracy theories online, and also underscored the inscrutable nature of the Trump family's most mysterious member. Okay, so Kate.

Melania Trump, you know, the first lady that we all know and love, Melania Trump, went missing for a few weeks. I'm putting missing in scare quotes as I say this, but she went missing. We didn't see her. We, the American people. First, she was at Andrews Air Force Base at a welcoming ceremony.

with the president, then she was hospitalized on May 10th for kidney treatment, and then she just seemed to disappear. She had no public events. Her appearances were canceled. Strange statements started coming from her Twitter account. It didn't seem like she was necessarily writing some of her tweets. And gradually, this became a bizarre scandal, as everything in the Trump age does. So after the first couple of weeks of her being missing, a lot of Trump's critics in the media started speculating somewhat seriously, but also somewhat ridiculously, that Melania Trump had gone missing or that she'd escaped from the White House or that she was otherwise being hidden away for some reason.

And people were speculating this even in recent days after a couple of reporters, including a CNN reporter at the White House. you know, they were tweeting. They were saying, oh, you know, I just saw Melania walking down the hallway. And people were still, because she wasn't actually out in public and, you know, outside at public events, people just sort of put away those tweeted confirmations of sightings of Melania. And they chalked it up to the machine covering for Melania in her mysterious absence. So this is a strange story, right? There's always been this sense that Melania Trump is the most. unwitting and secretly resentful participant in Donald Trump's political career.

And so for a lot of people, I think, her disappearance suggested some sort of dissent or rebellion or else punishment. That said, it was also weird to watch a lot of people, including reporters, online, freak out because the first lady basically just didn't want to be seen in front of cameras for a few weeks. Kate, what do you make of the great Melania Trump conspiracy corner? Well, first I got to admit that Melania's disappearance did fascinate and freak me out because we're not used to seeing a First Lady retreat from public life to this extent. And so I was definitely keeping tabs on the story and wanted to know where the hell she was.

but it was a little disconcerting to see how freely everyone was just sort of projecting whatever fantasies they had onto the brief disappearance and this has been going on like even before this sort of three week period of going away people already had like a bunch of conspiracies about Melania

there was a thing where people thought she was using a body double which I thought was just sort of of stupid. But I do, I mean, so basically I think it was a legitimate thing to be interested in because it was objectively weird and, you know, people should have been trying to figure out what happened to her. But at the same time, I was also, I don't think it was super smart to get as freewheeling as people did with wondering where she had gone. Like, I think the baseline, interest was correct, but the things that people did with that interest was silly. Right.

Yeah, there are two halves of this story. There's the Melania half, right, where it's sort of, Melania is just mysterious, right? Like, when you talk about people thinking she is a body double, people essentially writing fan fiction about Melania Trump, there is something that, there's something about her and her, I think, her, she doesn't talk that much in the press. she certainly doesn't talk as much or as recklessly as other members of the Trump family do in the press. And then she wears, I mean, to the point of absurdity, she wears sunglasses everywhere. She wears them at night. She wears them at all events. She hides behind these.

She wears these giants. Sunglasses all the time. There's a lot about how she carries herself that makes her seem inaccessible. Yeah, I mean, and just the fact that she didn't move to the White House right away when Trump took residence there. And she's really, she waited over a year and a half to roll out her first lady initiative. First ladies in the past have sort of taken on a pet project a lot sooner. She's really refused the ceremonial responsibilities of the first lady as much as she possibly could have. this is my only uh the only thing i'll say about like what i think monia has been up to is that it's

probably like the most obvious explanation which is she had to get some sort of kidney surgery felt shitty and just didn't want to do anything and the fact that she retreated even more from this public role that everyone had expected her to play freaked everyone out and And she's such a cipher to begin with that it caused this sort of, yeah, media speculation frenzy. Right. She's a cipher on the one hand. But then on the other hand is the White House itself and Donald Trump himself. And they communicate so erratically and chaotically.

You could imagine, you could imagine Melania Trump being press shy in some other White House. And it wouldn't have escalated to this point because the White House would have communicated about it differently. Yeah, or... And her staff would have communicated about it differently. Or cajoled her into doing more in some way. Three weeks deep into this, Melania Trump tweeted. There's a point at which she acknowledged the burgeoning conspiracy theories about her. And it's specifically how this tweet is written and how much like a Donald Trump tweet,

it feels like really completed people's, I think, perverse theorizing about it. I'm going to read this quote-unquote Melania Trump tweet. I see the media is working overtime, speculating where I am and what I'm doing. Rest assured, I'm here at the White House with my family, feeling great and working hard on behalf of children and the American people. Yeah, I mean, because Melania's other tweets, Malania has always been a super weird tweeter, but her other tweets have been, have not sounded like that. Yeah. She did that. She's not doing the like, I'm, the media is.

Yeah. Like my favorite Melania Trump tweet is when she just posted a picture of a beluga whale and said, what is she thinking? Yeah. I mean, that definitely fueled the flames because it really sounded like Donald Trump had gained control of his wife's Twitter account. Right. Do you think that Melania, do you think that Melania owes us anything? That's hard. That's a hard question because I think you're hitting at this, right?

The idea of the position of the First Lady and the ceremonial function. It has taken on so many different aspects and so many different iterations that at this point, A lot of people seem to have come to view the position of First Lady as a quasi-political appointee position. Yeah. And it's sort of, Melania is forcing a rethink of that in a lot of ways. I don't know. I would prefer a world in which Melania, if she really wanted to, could just do her own thing. Me too.

That's why I'm like, okay, I get, I think that first ladies are first men who want to take on this. activist role. Like Hillary Clinton clearly wanted to use the position to advocate for causes she cared about. Michelle Obama to a lesser degree, like, I think she probably would have been happier had she been able to just continue her successful professional life. But she used the role to advocate for, like, child health in a very real way. Like she was putting a lot of time and energy into it. But I don't think it should have been required of her. So I'm not, I think if there's any, like, moral to come from the Melania debacle, it's that maybe, I don't know, we should, there's so much other shit going on with the Trump White House. Maybe we should just let Melania be a recluse. Right.

And maybe this will make us more aware of how bizarre the role, the ceremonial role of the first spouse has always been. Right. I think the first lady role has become obligatory in a lot of ways that maybe it shouldn't be. I think the other component of this, though, is the Melania Donald Trump marriage, which itself also seems obligatory. Because a real meme since Trump's inauguration has definitely been awkward public interactions between Melania and Donald Trump. I think that's the other thing that makes this story feel so normal. notable is it's not just that she didn't, it's not just that Melania Trump didn't want to move to Washington. It's just, it's more so that whenever she's at a public event with Trump, she seems like she

doesn't belong. I don't think she, I mean, there are times. It really looks like she does not want to be married to him anymore. But do you remember during the hurricane in Texas, the very awkward moment where they're both there? This is, this is in the midst, by the way, of the backlash of, what is it, she was, Malina and was wearing stilettos on the tarmac on the way to hurricane relief effort. And it's literally Trump giving a speech and Melania is standing right to his left.

And Donald Trump starts speaking about how, oh, Melania really wanted to be here today. On behalf of myself, our vice president, Melania really wanted to be with us. She's really, it's really touched her heart what's gone on. And we've seen the devastation. Yeah. She really, if only she could have been here today. That was weird. But they have so many interactions like that.

And I think that's the other half of it. That itself, that dynamic has encouraged so much speculation. That's not even political speculation. It really is, it's gossip and it's shot in Freud in a way, right? It's shot in Freud about Donald Trump. And the side effect of it is that a lot of people have this liberation narrative that they've crafted for Melania. Definitely. And, okay, not to get too dark, but to get a little dark, there is another side to this, which is that Donald Trump has a history of treating women very poorly. And that means that there's an extra spotlight on his wife. Right.

Whether she's like an accomplice to him treating third parties poorly or whether she is herself the recipient of improper behavior. Like, I think some people, and I kind of am, are genuinely worried about Melania because she's married to a man that many people, including myself, perceive as potentially abusive or even dangerous towards women. That adds this extremely dark layer over the story or dark, I don't know, whatever, something dark. Yeah, right. Because she could be in real peril. And that makes it a lot less fun to joke about. Like, I've, that's the other reason why I've been really following the story. It's just like, scary and dark.

I don't know. Yeah. I mean, Trump, yeah, Trump's ex-wives have talked about this stuff in public in books and writing. And so, yeah, that definitely adds this, yeah, it adds a super worrisome subtext to the headline, Melania Trump missing for three weeks. Yeah. Right. Totally. But then that dynamic sort of raises the ultimate question of Melania Trump, which is, you know,

how much, like, we certainly look at a lot of other members of the Trump family as participants in the Donald Trump brand in a very shameful, assertive way. And I don't know, whenever media characterizes Melania as this person who is just sort of unwittingly along for the ride, I always wonder and worry whether we're minimized. her agency and all of this? Yeah, like, is she, because she's an adult woman. Like, she could very easily just be just as complicit in the private sphere as Ivanka is. Right. Where she fits on the spectrum of complicity in Trumpism is very, it's so unclear, especially because, like you said, there are these questions about the nature of Donald and Melania Trump's relationship.

it just makes it so that she is the one person. Like I have a very clear sense of how much blame I think Jared or Ivanka or Eric Jr. deserve. If we're sort of assessing people who have participated and who are participating in Donald Trump's political life. Malani is the one person where she's just like, I don't know where she goes on the spectrum even. It's totally unclear. Yeah, me neither. I don't even know if we'll ever find out because I don't know if we're ever going to. I don't know if we're ever going to find out more about Melania than we already know.

Right. Like, I don't think she's going to start talking. It's weird to see how the, like, public reaction to Melania has sort of evolved over the years. Because we were talking earlier about how, like, during the Trump candidacy, there was some, there was already, like, Melania fanfic going on. The New York Times published this, like, really lovely in. compelling short story by Chimamanda Nagoji Adichie about like from the perspective of a fictional Melania. And I remember reading it and being like, wow, I love this story. But also feeling like fondness for Melania. There seemed to be that early on there seemed to be this willingness to

view her opacity favorably. Be like maybe she's just a sweet, shy woman. But then once Trump was elected, it was like, no, maybe she's complicit. And now the missing narrative has sort of, I think, made people more sympathetic to her again? I don't know. It's just, it's weird to see, like, the way that people approach Melania seems to ebb and flow based on, but she's been a cipher the whole time. Like, she hasn't given anyone anything this entire time. Right. Well, at the very least, at this point, at least we know where she is. She seems to be at the White House. I think we finally, like, lured her out of hiding.

And Trump is very dramatically being like, I told you she was here. I think they turned the cameras on her at some event at the White House. And Trump, like, very awkwardly belabor at the point of, she's right there on camera. So we know where she is, but I don't think we'll ever know who she is. Right. There are already not one, but two rat beefs this summer, and it's only June. The first between Drake and Pusha T gave the world the iconic line, You Are Hiding a Child.

Pusha claim that character. Let me keep with the facts. You are hiding a child. Let that boy come home. Deadbeat motherfucker playing border patrol. Oh, Adonis is your son. And he deserves more than in Adidas press run. That's real. Pusha claim that Drake had fathered and hidden a kid in the story of Adidon. That feud got the bulk of media attention. but while it was dirty and personal, it's still very much a war of words, while the second feud, which is between Chief Keefe and Takashi 6-9, is actually looking far more serious. Chief Keefe recently blamed Takashi after Keefe was nearly shot, like with a real gun, outside of a New York City hotel. People have been watching these feuds closely and almost enjoying them as though they're TV dramas, following each new development on social media.

I'm wondering if it's irresponsible to find Chief Keefe versus Takashi exciting. Well, the originating problem here is that Takashi 6thine himself is picking these fights. I mean, he's picking and persecuting these fights via social media. He's very deliberately being provocative and he's trying to start shit. He's trying to be a bully. and he, in the case of his trying to provoke Chief Keefe, a shrie rapper from Chicago, and also trying to provoke Little Reese and others and feuding with them initially in like Instagram captions and, you know, in Instagram videos. And it now seeming like an actual cross-country shootout.

You know, this is what, this is, Tukashi has engineered this feud. to be a social media spectacle. You know what I mean? And I think that... I definitely think it's irresponsible to a degree. Like, I mean, if you think about... Think about... People bring this up all the time, obviously.

But think about Biggie versus Tupac as a rap feud, right? Like, a lot of people clearly in the moment enjoyed the tension of that rivalry. And then both of those rappers die, right? And people still, I think, after both of those rappers' deaths, cherished in a perverse, but also in a way that makes sense, they cherish this sort of idea that those two rappers are forever in contrast and conflict with one another. And their legacies are in contrast in conflict with one another. But the whole thing about that beef is that it was supposed to serve as a lesson of, yeah, rappers can fight, but they really should not kill each other. Yeah, they probably should not kill each other.

Yeah, I would say definitely. Or they should not surround themselves with people who are going to get them killed. Maybe that's the better way to put it. Yeah. And Takashi is trying to restore the feeling right now. Because part of this was like Takashi saying, you know, at one point Takashi 69 says, I'll give you 48 hours, Keith, they try to kill me. Like, I'm in New York.

And this is sort of a memed thing in all of this is, you know, Takashi was bragging my high. He's in New York. If you want to come shoot me, come shoot me. And then the next day, Chief Keith arrives in New York. And Takashi's in Los Angeles. Walking around and being like, yeah, we're in Los Angeles. No one's touched me.

You know, this is very much, it feels like, on a certain level, it feels like really juvenile stunting. It almost feels like a Tom and Jerry type situation. But on the other hand, like, yeah, a lot of these people are flashing guns on Instagram. And there are these stories about people getting, you know, shot at in Midtown. Yeah. So yeah, it's irresponsible, but there is something that is thrilling on a very perverse level that I think a lot of people, especially if you're in hip hop culture, especially if you're very young right now in hip hop culture, that you're not going to look away from. I feel like I'm not in hip hop culture and I feel like I've been looking at this just like glancing at it.

And I feel like I don't know a lot of the history of how rat beefs have like evolved over the year. have they gotten less violent since like Tupac and Biggie? Not necessarily. I would say not necessarily, no. I definitely think of like the aughts feud between, I guess it was a three-way, no, it was a two-way food, between GZ and Gucci, which at one point leads to one of GZ's associates being murdered, right?

But because the GZ's friend who was killed during his feud with Gigi man is not, was not himself like a superstar rapper. It doesn't have the same narrative. It's not framed, that feud isn't frame the same way as Biggie Tupac is. Yeah, it's, what I think has really happened is that the caliber of rapper who is engaged in that sort of really nasty feud has changed, right? Like a lot of the, you have two types of rap beats, right? You either have superstar rappers beefing. So like a rapper's beefing at a superstar level, like Drake having to, you know, beef with push a T, which feels like a very mainstream, like late night television level feud.

Yeah, that one I'm not worried about. I feel like I can enjoy that one as a spectacle because I know that it's so not going to result in bloodshed. Right, right. Drake is so far removed from getting in one shot. Yeah. And then on the, but then the second tier rap beef you have is legit street rappers. People who are, I mean, for one, I would just say, like, much younger than Drake and Pusha. Like, Bush is in his 40s.

Drake is 30 or 31 now. And, like, but Takashi and Keefe, I mean, it's weird because, like, Keith has been a popular musician for years, but he was super young when he blew up. He's still in his early 20s. You know what I mean? And Takashi is also. Takashi is also young, and these people are still in the streets in a way that obviously not even Pusha Tea is. And that's what makes it seem super reckless and super perverse and super. And we're saying this in contrast to the Pusha Tea Drake Beef, which involved like insulting somebody for having multiple cirrhosis and having a hidden family.

Right. That's tame. That's tame in comparison to watching. Takashi and Chief Keith chase each other across the United States shooting at each other. Or I wouldn't even say at each other because the weird thing about this is that Chief Keefe at one point, certainly when Chief Kee first blew up a few years ago, he was seen as a wild child. And, like, Chief Keefe has gone through a lot since hip-hop fandom first got to know him. Like, he's been out of rehab.

He's got warrants. He can't even really, he can't, you know, Takashi's made a big point of insulting Keefe because he can't really be in Chicago, like talking about, like, CPD is looking for him. Like, a lot of, you know, Takashi's not the only person who has grievances with Chief Keefe, let's put it like that. Yeah. But that just makes this feel so perilous on a certain level because Takashi and Keefe are these, like, Keefe is somebody who has come a long way. There was a point at which I could imagine Chief Keefe being like, yeah, I'll go to jail, I'll shoot this guy. And Chief Keefe, it's almost this poignant narrative where it's like, yo, Keefe is.

Keith has really kept his nose clean for a couple years now. And watching Takashi 6-9 come in, like the Joker. Provoking him. Yeah. It's just, it's really, it's really ugly to watch. Yeah, I have not enjoyed watching that at all. It's like very dark and depressing. And the fact that it's the younger generation, like there's been a devolution sort of back towards this.

I might actually shoot you. It might, I mean, I don't know that, I don't know that it's a devolution. I think stuff like this, I mean, Keith himself used to be wrapped up in feuds like this all the time. I think the thing that makes it perverse in this dynamic is that Takashi 6-9, just take Takashi 6-9 who- He's perverse in general. Right, that's the problem is that he is just such an unsympathetic figure. He is the ultimate downvote, you know, like everything about, I. I just want to cancel everything about Takashi, 6-9.

And so you watch this and you're just like, this isn't even a conflict. One, it's a conflict that just, it doesn't even exist in the form of, like, enjoyable music. It just exists as threats of violence. But two, like, obviously I'm rooting for Keefe. Like, I'm not going to root for this other guy. This other guy is just a troll. This other guy is just the ultimate, he's just a dirt bag, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. The thing that makes rap beefs great when they're truly great is that you are watching two people who, even if you declare one side, you declare a favorite side, right? You're watching two people who are matched who, you could see anyone rooting for either of them. And it's just hard to root for Takashi 6'9. Yeah. Trying to get Chief Keefe put away or get himself killed. Like there's nothing sympathetic. about what he's trying to do. And that's what makes this a bad rap beat. Yeah. Well, also, it's like the good ones, it's about the music that comes out of the beef. It's like you're enjoying the back and forth in its art.

It's not about actually physically harming one another. Right. I will say the new dynamic is that in addition to enjoying the music, there is a level in which beasts now are about enjoying the I guess we'll call it non-music like enjoying the multimedia meme level stuff because that's a big part of that's a big part of what's so enjoyable

about the Drake Push a Tea Feud is not just story of Addon but it's the fact that the memeification of Drake has turned on Drake and it's created this new wave of what it means to meme Drake and now he looks like the butt of the memes as opposed

he looks like the butt in a way that like really disenfranchised empowers Drake, whereas before memes only further empowered Drake. Or you see things like during before the story of added, before PushaTee released that song that sort of hemmed Drake up, like Drake releases Dupy freestyle and it's this disc that people think initially, oh, Drake really got Pusha T and then he sends an invoice to Pusha T's record label for $100,000 for free publicity. And like that invoice is the perfect encapsulation of like a post-Drake.

feud because you have the song on the one hand and then you have this web image of an invoice, right? And that becomes a thing. Other people appropriated. Other people remix that image. But that's a way of enjoying a rap beef that is outside of the music itself in a positive way. Yeah.

And then there's enjoying a rap feud in a non-musical way that is destructive, like shooting at each other. Yeah. Which is not a deal. Damage control is on the record as being anti- anyone shooting each other. Yeah, people shouldn't shoot each other. No.

Yeah, it's weird because I do think that there's a, I definitely as somebody who is invested in hip hop as a critic and just as a listener. Like, there is a weird valorization that sometimes happens of like, oh man, the Wild West, the good old days where like threats actually meant something and people weren't just doing it for the grand, people weren't just doing it for cloud, all these ways of people talking about how, you know, if you said something at one point in time, you had to back it up, whereas now, like, so much stuff plays out via social media. Like, I get the foggyism of complaining about that sort of thing,

of complaining that millennials fight on Instagram instead of slapboxing each other. But it's just, you know, I think the Takashi Chief Key feud is really underscored that it's just hard to enjoy watching somebody risk not in their life, but their freedom. They're risking their life. They're risking their freedom. They're risking their musical career. And again, in Chief Keith's case, it's not even that he's risking that. It's that he was already risking that for years earlier in his career.

And he seems to have come such a long way to becoming a more responsible actor and a righteous actor in the case of this feud. Because he largely seems to be trying to ignore it. Except for when he flew in York. Yeah. But I mean, I guess what I mean. is like he's trying to I look at Keefe and I

do think he's trying to keep it on the level right he's trying to intimidate Takashi but I think he knows that he needs to first and foremost not create problems for himself by getting anybody killed yeah the thing that makes it unenjoyable is that Takashi is not

behaving similarly like he really is trying to get shot oh brother I was going to say on a lighter note Will Drake stop hiding the child? Of course. So do you think we're going to get like a... Fuck, what was that Will Smith song with...

Just the two of us. Just the two of us part two. Just the two of us part two. That is a much lighter for you to talk about. I mean, yeah, this is damage control. And as far as Drake's damage control goes, I think there's one line where... There's one line on the story of Adidon

where push a T says, he's basically revealing Drake's song, his son. And he's saying, yo, your son, like, I know you plan to announce your secret son of the world soon by way of your, like, pending clothing line with Adidas, and you wanted to associate your son, your hidden son with this clothing line announcement, but your son deserves better than that, right? At least a Nike. Right. Oh, my God.

But that was what a push-a-tee's sort of bars. It's like your son deserves more than an Adidas press run. But that really speaks to the nature of Drake, right? Is that he is totally going to... His messaging about his son is going to sound like product messaging. It's going to be a part of his rollout for his album, Scorpion, that's coming out later this month. It's going to be a part of his brand management, which is weird.

It's weird that we go from kid we didn't even know it existed to... existed to incorporating a small child into the brand management of a pop star. And it's a thing that I guess happens with all celebrity children. Got to monetize those toddlers. Yeah, but it's, in this case, it's just charring because the kids come out of nowhere. You know what I mean? Well, I came out somewhere. Like, oh my God.

But you know what I'm saying, right? Yeah, yeah. Contrast it with a Kardashian baby rollout, right? Where it's like the pregnancy is this thing, even if it's not a, It's a thing. This is like a surprise drop. Yeah. Right.

A surprise drop. Yeah. A real surprise drop. Well, yeah. So push of ruined Drake's surprise drop, basically. Right. Right. That's exactly what happened.

We're talking about a kid as a surprise drop. But it's true. In the context of how Drake is going to talk about his secret baby mama and his secret kid going forward, it's going to seem like that. It's going to seem like this is a guy who's adjusting to the fact that he was trying to surprise drop a child. And there was a leak. Push the team was basically the leak.

Yes. Oh, my God. I'm still kind of excited for whatever, just the two of us, Part 2, Drake's style. Are you really? I don't, oh, God, I don't know. Think of the memes.

Think of the memes. I'm always thinking of the memes, there are too many memes. That's my page. The first time the doctor placed you in my arms. I knew I'd meet death before I let you meet harm. All though questions arose in my mind. Would I be man enough?

All right, well, that's damage control. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs. We'll see you all again in two weeks.