Russian TV “congratulated” US President-elect Donald Trump on the election by highlighting once and future First Lady modeling career photos, including nude images – likely with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval, in a possible bid to set the Kremlin’s power dynamic of the Putin-Trump and Moscow-Washington relationships.
Russian newscasters celebrated his electoral victory with jokes and jabs about the next first couple on prime-time TV last week. The husband and wife presenter team of Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva showed the collage of modeling photos on the nationally broadcast Russian show 60 Minutes, as reported by Newsweek. Melania modeled around the world in the 1990s and early 2000s before marrying Trump in 2005.
“Now that Melania Trump’s husband has finally won, she is getting ready to come back to the White House for a second time,” Popov said as Skabeyeva smirked in front of the display.
“Here is how Melania looked in the year 2000. This is the cover of the magazine GQ.” Many of the photos were from a 2000 GQ photoshoot and show Melania completely nude and in suggestive positions.
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“The future first lady lies on top of furs in a negligee. Inside the magazine, Melania’s sexy photos near a private plane and aboard the plane. In one of the shots, the model is wearing only her underwear, lying on a blue carpet with the US seal, as though the editors of the men’s magazine knew something in advance about the future of their model,” the presenters said.
Appearing on a popular TV program sanctioned by the Kremlin, the photos almost certainly had to be approved by Putin for airing before they went live. The show aired after Trump reportedly spoke to Putin on Thursday and warned him not to “escalate” Ukraine.
Sharing Melania’s old photos in the popular show was meant to be an obvious slight to the president-elect that spells out the power dynamic of the US-Russia relationship – or at least how Putin would like it to be.
By publically shaming Trump’s wife, the Russian leader is demonstrating both that nothing is off-limits and who is in the dominant position. The Russian leader has used misogynistic attacks and rhetoric for decades to demean his enemies and bolster his supporters.
The stunt may also have been meant as a subtle threat that the Kremlin holds other embarrassing or politically damaging material that could threaten the 47th president.
Rumors have circulated for decades that Putin may have held onto some sort of incriminating leverage over Trump from the days he traveled to the Soviet Union and later Russia as a businessman.
Now Putin appears to be using Melania to make Trump understand that Russia has power in many forms, and is not afraid to personally attack the president-elect to achieve its aims. Putin is attempting to set the stage to welcome his ally back into the White House on Russian terms. The president-elect has yet to publicly respond to the “congratulatory” message.
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