As the Trump-provoked regional war expanded disastrously by the hour, the White House dispatched Melania to preside over the U.N. Security Council today. The Council is the U.N.’s principal organization responsible for safeguarding international peace and security. The chairmanship rotates monthly by nation and March is America’s turn.

“In a historic move, First Lady Melania Trump addressed the U.N. Security Council as the United States assumed its Presidency,” her office announced as she delivered a nugatory word salad of a speech titled “Peace Through Education.” Without the digital watermark, it’s impossible to be sure, but it had the emotionally vacant pablum flavor of AI writing throughout. For example: “Intellect blossoms humanity’s fundamental needs: shelter, food security, clean water, and health care. And predictably, almost all communities will have access to knowledge within our lifetimes.”

As children were being shredded under an American-Israeli carpet bombing of Tehran –Secretary Kegseth promised there were “no rules of engagement” in this war –Melania’s soigné presence was a middle finger from our warmongering nation to the international community. In its sheer grotesquery, it recalled Imelda Marcos collecting thousands of pairs of shoes while her husband’s secret police left tortured corpses in the gutters of Manila.

Melania at the Security Council is a wink-wink from the administration’s Groypers and Bronze Age Pervert fans to the MAGA sector that prefers the Taliban model when it comes to women and politics. Having a resume that starts and ends with being a mute human accessory makes her the Trump movement’s ideal woman.

I’m guessing the producers of this cynical spectacle are members of the Tate Brothers A-Team. This claque of Trump Administration incels and misogynists brought notorious rape-propagandists to the U.S., platformed pastors and other wackos who believe women should “submit” and should not vote, draped the Department of Education with a giant banner of a 19th-century anti-suffragist, removed women from leadership roles in the Pentagon and elsewhere, and erased government websites and plaques celebrating American women’s contributions to government, culture, and the sciences.

The Trump movement, from the day he rode down the elevator in 2015 with his silent “supermodel,” has always been about promoting the transactional femme as the ideal model for women. Melania wielding the gavel at the U.N. Security Council models to girls and women that if you do exactly what the patriarchy wants you to do – speak little, moisturize, provide sexual titillation, and learn to balance on hobbling fuck-me shoes – you too might reach high places, at least for that killer photo shoot.

There is a certain feminine strength in this work, don’t underestimate it. It is not easy to pick your way down jetway steps in stilettos without looking down. It is even harder to suppress your gag reflex at the breath of disgusting old men.

Melania comes from the same school of hard knocks that produced those tough, hustling Epstein-affiliated Russian women who endured revulsion and humiliation and carried on regardless – some of whom are now CEOs of their own Silicon Valley companies.

Melania’s path required less of her intellectually, but no less in humiliation.

What would you do for a free Trump Tower apartment for yourself and your family of chain immigrants? Dahhling, would you pose naked in a chain-mail bra and S&M blinders in a fake Air Force One cockpit? Pose again, naked and in handcuffs?* Coo to Howard Stern on live radio about your tubby, insecure, but rich boyfriend’s sexual prowess?

No. It is NOT a walk in the park to be a Melania. But if you can make it look easy, and better yet, look as though you like it (she has some challenges with that), there are rewards.

The Trump era opened with the slap-in-the-face 2016 election of a self-described “pussy grabber.” This second regime is an out and proud Predator’s Ball, from the convicted felon president himself down to our roofie-rape-accused “Secretary of War,” to sex-assault and stalking-accused DHS shadow boss Corey Lewandowski, to Nazi-loving manosphere minion Paul Ingrassia, the Tate bro fanboy lawyer who has written that the rape-cheerleading brothers represent “hope for the survival of manhood.” Kegseth recently befouled the halls of the Pentagon by bringing in for a prayer session his “pastor,” Doug Wilson, who believes marital rape is impossible because when a woman says “I do,” she consents for life.

Last week, video circulated of lunatic Christian nationalist pastor Dale Partridge instructing the women of his congregation to model “joyful submission” to their husbands as an example to “insubordinate feminist women” everywhere: “Our duty as the church is to tell the world what is normal.”

That is normal?

For millions of real American girls and women, the role model is Taylor Swift: a sexy self-made billionaire about to marry a hot football star whose dick works so well she has written songs about it. That combination enrages Trumpy predators and their fanboys.

One of martyred Charlie Kirk’s last Twitter chatrooms convened a gang of millennial assholes to debate: “Should Taylor Swift submit to Travis Kelce?” I tuned in for a minute. The last words I think I heard the living Kirk say were: “I don’t want a wife who tells me what to do with my money.” Ironically, said wife now controls his tens of millions of dollars. Oh.

In Trumpworld, normal is Epsteinism: a philosophy and way of life in which women are not human but mannequins to decorate the boys club – sex toys for entertainment. Despite the second wave, despite Me Too, despite women outpacing men in school and professional life, Epsteinism never really died out.

But oh, the rewards of trading your autonomy, dignity and self-respect in Trumpworld! Pose nearly nude and purr sexily to Howard Stern about how Donald beds you several times a day...

I really don’t care, do u?

The sum total of what Melania has done for the world so far: accessorized her oafish mate, tore up the White House Rose Garden, hated on her Christmas duties, and rehabilitated junior Harvey Weinstein (Brett Ratner).

She didn’t sign up with Donald to become First Lady of America. She has submitted to stumble-reading speeches written by Trump hacks with more crypto interests than brains. At least at the UN – the Tower of Babel – she could have finally spoken in Slovenian, her native language, the one she actually knows, thereby giving a little paid work to one of the translators who, along with much U.N. staff, will soon be out of work, if not already unemployed thanks to AI and the international organization’s declining budget.

Melania’s great legacy will be that she modeled submission to America’s insubordinate women.

In her willingness to serve as a silent prop for photo shoots and participate in the occasional trolling stunt like today’s at the U.N., Melania serves another political purpose. As Steve Bannon understood from Gamergate, misogyny is a powerful organizing force for the MAGA brotherhood of unhappy American men – men brutalized by forces that women have nothing to do with, starting with war.

Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow