Politics - News Analysis
Conservatives Are Furious With Actor Chris Meloni For Tweeting Naked Photo of Melania Trump
Law and Order SVU actor Chris Meloni appears to be courting controversy after he tweeted a nude picture of Melania Trump from her days as a “model.”
Meloni’s tweet was a tongue-in-cheek response after the first lady’s wardrobe choices in Egypt – during a wider visit to Africa – were criticized for being “colonial”. Melania lamented, “I wish people would focus on what I do, not what I wear.”
People on social media had compared her outfit to that of Colonel Sanders or Meryl Streep from her role in Out of Africa.
Here is one of Meloni’s tweets:
“Focus on what I do, not what I wear”
Our First Lady pic.twitter.com/MH6kDHSmya— Chris Meloni (@Chris_Meloni) October 8, 2018
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Many people criticized Meloni of shaming the first lady based on a job she used to have.
This is really sexist. She was a model, she was working at her job as a model, and this was her job to be photographed this way. It’s really really uncool to show photos of her working as though it were an expression of her true self.
— Mistress Matisse (@mistressmatisse) October 8, 2018
This is sexist. This feels like conservatives trying to discredit Stormy Daniels because of her profession. Please don’t post things like this. These kind of posts only helps Trump.
— Michael Danish (@michaeldanish) October 8, 2018
Chris, delete this tweet. You’re better than this, man. Sure, Melania is an avaricious predator complicit in Trump’s crimes, but we can all talk shit about her without being sexist or slut-shaming. There are better ways to illustrate her hypocrisy!
— CQ (@coketweet) October 8, 2018
Meloni also tweeted out this photo, and got a similar response:
“Focus on what I do not what I wear” pic.twitter.com/Ooupz4uwfK
— Chris Meloni (@Chris_Meloni) October 8, 2018
Take a look:
Do you do you really think these are, like,family snapshots? She’s working. It’s a job. These pictures have nothing to do with Trump’s (awful) politics or behavior, so how about you don’t dump sexist shit on women because you don’t like their husband.
— Mistress Matisse (@mistressmatisse) October 8, 2018
It’s hard to take her seriously when she is only known for what designer label she wears. She has no real legitimate causes like former FLOTUS’s of past have done. Her cyberbullying campaign was hypocritical since she should’ve started with her husband before lecturing others.
— Blake Butler (@blakejbutler5) October 8, 2018
I see where he’s coming from. I’d be interested to see the tweets of the people telling him to “delete this”, etc. from the times when there was outrage about Michelle Obama’s arms. Or when she was compared to an ape, and mocked by other high profile conservatives on Twitter.
— Jay Dav-O (@ChocnessMonsta) October 8, 2018
Haven’t a lot of people that have been in the modeling, and entertainment business done shoots or gigs nude or damn near close to it… I think there is nothing wrong being comfortable with your body, no matter who you are. #withinreason #beingcomfortable #expressyourself
— Dorothy Peterson (@vitamindove) October 11, 2018
Is this being mean? I doubt Melania is ashamed of this photo. She is a shallow person who married Trump for his money. There are photos of her in S&M gear mostly nude with women in lesbian-type poses. Who was she modelling for? She wasn’t selling clothing in either case
— Marni (Autism Mom) (@Cinco_de_Marni) December 20, 2018
Also, it turns out that nude photo Meloni tweeted out was from a shoot in 1995, a year before Melania was legally able to work in the US.
Her original modeling agent in the US, Paolo Zampolli, said that he recruited her to come to New York from Milan and helped her obtain an H1-B visa, which allowed her to stay in the US for three years and do modeling work.
“She never worked illegally for our agency. She always worked with a visa,” Zampolli said. “It’s very easy, very standard, to get a model visa, because she had experience in Europe. Trust me, I don’t want to be lying about this. She had a visa.”
The Trump campaign has not provided details of Melania’s visa history or released her records. Following a report on Politico, she released a statement saying she had always followed the rules. She said she obtained a green card in 2001 and became a U.S. citizen in 2006.
“Let me set the record straight: I have at all times been in full compliance with the immigration laws of this country,” she said on Twitter, after questions about her history were raised in news reports. “Any allegation to the contrary is simply untrue.”
Questions about her immigration status surfaced in the wake of the publication of nude photos taken in New York in 1995, when then-Melania Knauss was 25.
The photos show Melania completely nude, some of her with another woman.
But in interviews, Melania Trump has said she first came to the US in 1996, and that she periodically traveled back to Slovenia in order to stay in compliance with visa rules.
“I followed the law the way it’s supposed to be,” she said on MSNBC in 2016. “I never thought to stay here without papers. I had a visa. I traveled every few months back to the country to Slovenia, to stamp the visa.”
“I came back, I applied for the green card,” she said. “I applied for the citizenship later on.… So I went by the system.”
The statements raise two issues. First, the photographs suggest she was working in the US earlier than she had previously claimed.
Second, if Melania Trump had held an H1-B visa used for working in the US, she would have been allowed to stay for three years and would not have needed to return to her home country, immigration experts said.
Her description of going back and forth from New York and Slovenia is more consistent with a B-1 tourist visa. But such a visa doesn’t permit the person to work, David Leopold, an immigration lawyer in Cleveland, said in an interview.
It is technically fraudulent for a traveler to tell a US immigration officer that a trip is for tourism if he or she is really coming for a job, Leopold said. Such a misrepresentation might even be cause to strip someone’s green card or citizenship, if they did not disclose it at the time they applied for changing their immigration status, Leopold said.
But such violations are common and rarely prosecuted.
“If Melania would release her immigration file, all the questions would be answered,” Leopold said, adding that there’s “no reason not to release the immigration file.”
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