Melania Trump has never been a traditional first lady. But to hear it from President Donald Trump at a White House event on Monday, she also has a rare ability to smash past entrenched partisan divides.
“I’m not even sure you realize, honey,” Trump said to his wife in the Rose Garden at the White House. “You know, a lot of the Democrats and Republicans don’t get along so well. You’ve made them get along.”
The first lady’s purported achievement: Supporting the passage of the “TAKE IT DOWN” Act, a bill to combat revenge porn, including deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence.
Trump signed that bill on Monday. Though most states already have revenge porn laws on the books, it’s the first bill that Trump has signed in his second term that touches AI.
Melania Trump’s appearance on Monday was a relative rarity. The New York Times reported earlier this month that she had spent less than 14 days at the White House since Trump’s second inauguration, and the first lady has long taken a different approach to the role from prior presidential spouses.
She ultimately spoke for less than four minutes, thanking lawmakers and advocates as she decried the impact of new technologies on children.
“Artificial intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation: sweet, addictive, and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children,” she said.
The first lady has sought to put her stamp on the legislation, framing it as a continuation of the children’s well-being and online safety initiatives that she undertook during her husband’s first term. “Today, I’m proud to say that the values of ‘Be Best’ will be reflected in the law,” she said.
The reality, however, is more complex.
The bill had been making its way through Congress last year, and it was originally supposed to be signed into law before the Trumps returned to the White House.
But after the bill passed the Senate for the first time in December, the legislation was slipped into an ill-fated government funding bill that Elon Musk and hardline conservatives tanked for unrelated reasons.
The spending bill that ultimately passed days later did not include the TAKE IT DOWN Act, requiring lawmakers to go through the whole exercise once again this year.
The bill was also never that controversial, at least on Capitol Hill. While some digital rights advocates raised free speech concerns, only two lawmakers voted against it when it came up for a vote in the House last month.
Meanwhile, it passed the Senate via a “voice vote” — meaning no one opposed it, so there was no need to hold a vote — in both December and February.
On Monday, none of that was mentioned. The first lady, according to Trump, had taken up an “amazing issue,” tackling a problem that’s “gone on at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”
“Working with our first lady, though, we’ve shown that that bipartisanship is possible,” Trump said. “I mean, it’s the first time I’ve seen such a level of bipartisanship, and it’s a beautiful thing to do.”
