One has to feel a little bit sorry for Melania Trump.

The First Lady, after all, has to go home to Donald Trump when the rest of us can turn off the TV or scrunch up the newspaper or cease trolling Twitter posts. Hubby is a slacker who watches too much television, is all the time cross about something or other, doesn’t like socializing and probably drops his dirty underwear on the bedroom floor. She also presumably sees her spouse un-combed.

Although it should be noted that Mrs. Trump isn’t actually living under the same White House roof as the blunderbuss president, at least not yet. In court papers filed this week, the former model gives her address as 725 Fifth Ave. — Trump Tower — in New York City. That’s where Melania Trump continues to reside while her young son completes his school term.

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More to the point, legally, the New York address allows Mrs. Trump to refile a $150 million (U.S.) libel suit against the rabble-rousing British tabloid, the Daily Mail. The First Lady’s first attempt at bringing the bilious rag to heel was a suit brought in Maryland — on the very same day, in fact, that the Mail published a retraction admitting that a scandalizing story it published last summer was utter rubbish. Last week, the Maryland court dismissed the case, saying it didn’t have jurisdiction. But the Daily Mail, (corporately Mail Media Inc.) does have offices and a large staff in NYC. Hence the libel action now brought with the State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

On the limited evidence thus far, Mrs. Trump seems to take little pleasure in being catapulted to public and quasi-political status as the wife of the most powerful man in the world. She rarely smiles and looked to be gritting her teeth during the inauguration. This was clearly not what she’d envisioned as trophy wife, third in a series, to Trump. The high cheek bones and angular features that may have photographically benefitted her in glossy mag days merely look harsh now, even mean, at age 46. She still does fashion-plate stylishly enough, though several top drawer designers, including Mark Jacobs and Tom Ford, refuse to have anything to do with dressing her.

First Ladies are always expected to take on a cause; nothing too controversial. In a rare speech on the campaign trail, just before the election, Mrs. Trump said that, should her husband win, she would focus on combatting cyberbullying from the White House. Since then, not a peep, perhaps because the declaration was met with widespread derision. Tweeted Lady Gaga: “to say u will stand for anti-bullying is hypocrisy. Your husband is 1 of the most notorious bullies we have ever witnessed.”

Yet taking on the big fat fake-news tabs is a kind of anti-bullying counterattack. And Mrs. Trump was clearly slimed by the mucky Mail in a story about a claim that the modelling agency where she worked in the 1990s was also an escort service, quoting from reports in a magazine and unauthorized book in her native Slovenia. The inference that Melania was involved the alleged “sex business” was pungent, or so Mrs. Trump believes.

She’s already settled, just this past Tuesday, a similar action against a Maryland blogger who posted likewise stuff. According to a statement released by her lawyer, that individual has agreed to pay Mrs. Trump “a substantial sum in settlement.” The judge in that case rules: “The Court believes most people, when they hear the words ‘high-end escort,’ that describes a prostitute. There could be no more defamatory statement than to call a woman a prostitute.”

I wouldn’t agree with that assertion but won’t dispute the point here.

Read more:Melania Trump banking on millions from personal brand, court hears in libel case

Melania Trump has every right in the world to defend her name and her character. The problem is, in the most recent filing, that she has characterized herself as a brand rather than a wronged person, and a cash-cow whose potential earnings have been compromised, further blurring the line between President Trump and his family’s vast business interests. A president who still refuses to sell his assets or place them in a blind trust, opting instead to put his two oldest sons in charge of the business empire.

The complaint reads: “Plaintiff started her career as a professional model for many years, and evolved her career into developing and marketing her own lines of commercial products, including recent product deals for jewelry, accessories and skin care products, under her brand ‘Melania,’ and through her own companies.”

As a result of the Mail article, “Plaintiff’s brand has lost significant value, and major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her have been lost and/or substantially impacted.”

Further, and this is gobsmacking in its implications of how Mrs. Trump views her privileged position as first lady (albeit the White House is never mentioned): “Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world. These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance.”

Picture it: Eau de First Lady.

In fact, Mrs. Trump’s White House online biography, as originally written, was assailed for wording that appeared to promote her jewelry line. That was removed on the day Trump formally took office.

Is this family completely tone-deaf? Is there no crassness to which it will not descend?

Rightly or wrongly, the clear insinuation is that Melania Trump intended to financially capitalize on her status as the president’s trothed leg-over and “most photographed” blah-blah-blah. Essentially, the libel suit, as written, devolved first lady-hood into licensing rights. How cheesy and avaricious can you get? Runs in the family, though, with daughter Ivanka exploiting her surname as yet another of those well-heeled ladies-who-lunch and design schmatta on the side. (Some retailers have dropped her clothing and jewelry line; in Canada, some have been agitating for a boycott of Ivanka merchandise sold at Hudson’s Bay.)

A friend of mine, who really is a fashionista icon, sends along this pretend-First Lady whinge, riffing off the international bestseller written by Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai who survived a Taliban assassination attempt and later became the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate:

“Here I was, accused of being just another pretty face, rumored to be a whore, but actually, look what I did with the incredible opportunity I was given. I Am Malala. NO, I mean, I Am Melania.”

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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