Melania’s Press Office Calls Out ‘Opposition Media’

Melania Trump’s press office berated opposition media outlets that lobbed “baseless accusations” toward the first lady Tuesday after she launched her “Be Best” initiative to advocate for children.

Mrs. Trump unveiled the three tenets of her “Be Best” platform Monday while speaking in the White House’s Rose Garden. The platform promotes children’s well-being, warns against cyberbullying through social media, and seeks to raise awareness for how the nation’s opioid abuse epidemic affects children.

But many mainstream media figures and liberals mocked Mrs. Trump for her platform because of what they described as her husband’s belligerent use of Twitter to attack his critics. The first lady’s critics also accused her of plagiarizing former first lady Michelle Obama’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) educational booklet by recycling it for her “Be Best” initiative.

“Yesterday, first lady Melania Trump unveiled Be Best, her initiative meant to support children and the many issues they are facing today,” Trump’s press office said in a statement Tuesday. “After giving a strong speech that was met with a standing ovation and positive feedback, the focus from opposition media has been on an educational booklet, ‘Talking with Kids About Being Online’ produced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2009.”

The first lady’s office insisted that Mrs. Trump recycled the booklet and “agreed to add Be Best branding and distribute the booklet in an effort to use her platform to amplify the positive message within.”

“As she said in yesterday’s speech, she is going to use Be Best to promote people and organizations to encourage conversation and replication, and helping the FTC distribute this booklet is just one small example,” the press office continued.

Although the “Be Best” website initially billed the booklet as being by first lady Melania Trump and the Federal Trade Commission,” the website was later updated to say it was a “Federal Trade Commission booklet, promoted by First Lady Melania Trump.”

Melania Trump’s press office rebuked media members for focusing so heavily on the FTC booklet.

“Despite providing countless outlets with ample background, information, and on-the-record comments from the FTC, some media have chosen to take a day meant to promote kindness and positive efforts on behalf of children, to instead lob baseless accusations toward the first lady and her new initiatives,” the press office said.

Trump’s office pointed to comments from Nathaniel Wood, FTC’s consumer and business education division associate director, in which he noted that the FTC “encourages our partners to help spread our message to consumers.”

“We were excited that Mrs. Trump distributed this important information about staying safe online,” Wood said. “We look forward to continuing to work with her and others to help parents and children use the Internet safely and responsibly.”

The first lady’s press office urged mainstream media members “to attempt to Be Best in their own professions” and to “focus on some of the children and programs Mrs. Trump highlighted in her remarks yesterday.”

Related: Melania Trump Abused by Media’s ‘Double Standard’

Some media members latched onto the plagiarism allegation after placing heavy focus on an earlier allegation that Melania Trump plagiarized a paragraph from a 2008 speech of Michelle Obama’s during her 2016 Republican National Convention speech. A Trump staff writer later claimed responsibility.

But Monday’s plagiarism controversy wasn’t the only topic that mainstream media outlets obsessed over following Mrs. Trump’s “Be Best” launch.

The Media Research Center (MRC) found, for example, that ABC’s “World News Tonight” spent twice as much time analyzing and speculating about Melania’s marriage to the president amid the controversy surrounding porn star Stormy Daniels’ affair allegations than in covering the first lady’s initiative launch.

MRC also found that “NBC Nightly News” spent “more time talking about how hypocritical it was for her to care about cyberbullying, considering who her husband was.”

Well before she unveiled “Be Best,” pundits mocked Mrs. Trump — who was born in what is now known as Slovenia and speaks five languages — for her accent and heavily scrutinized her marriage amid allegations of her husband’s affairs. The “Free Melania” meme depicting the first lady as a prisoner of Trump’s in the White House also took off.

Hours before Melania Trump unveiled her initiative, The Washington Post published an article based on unnamed sources speculating that Mrs. Trump doesn’t live in the White House and spends little time with the president.

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.