Vanessa Trump Outdoes Herself With the Most Tone-Deaf Tweet About Family Separation

She deleted it, naturally.

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As more information comes out about the children of immigrants being taken from their parents at the border and placed in detention facilities and tent cities, the ability of people in Trump’s orbit to respond in the exact wrong way has been quite a thing to behold. Take Melania Trump’s tweet yesterday, in which she referenced how she and Queen Letizia of Spain discussed ways to “positively impact children” over tea:

Wow. That’s almost impressively tone-deaf, and the perfect mixture of vague and cruel in light of all the horrible news coming out of this country.

And, of course, there have been some knowingly despicable reactions to the administration’s zero-tolerance policy from those in the President's circle. Check out how former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski responded when asked about a ten-year-old girl with Down Syndrome who was forcibly taken from her mother at the border:

That’s a, uh, nice tent your kids have there. You almost have to hand it to Vanessa. This is so incredibly tone-deaf that it can only have been a done in earnest (I'm pretty sure Melania was trolling). She clearly had no idea when she tweeted this what it would look like, and that's almost worse. But she was evidently made aware: The tweet was deleted almost an hour later.

It's easy to focus on gaffes and Twitter scandals when things feel especially dark and hopeless. But remember, there really are things you can do to help the families affected by this policy. Here’s a rundown of four ways you can help right now.

And, as ever, you can donate to the ACLU. Here’s a direct link.

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Cady has been a writer and editor in Brooklyn for about 10 years. While her earlier career focused primarily on culture and music, her stories—both those she edited and those she wrote—over the last few years have tended to focus on environmentalism, reproductive rights, and feminist issues. She primarily contributes as a freelancer journalist on these subjects while pursuing her degrees. She held staff positions working in both print and online media, at Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and continued this work as a senior editor, first at Glamour until 2018, and then at Marie Claire magazine. She received her Master's in Environmental Conservation Education at New York University in 2021, and is now working toward her JF and Environmental Law Certificate at Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains.