I expected this take would come eventually. I did not expect it’d come from the right.

Melania Trump should be a role model for women and girls by … ending her marriage? What?

She shouldn’t even be asked about Stormygate. The story’s fair game for the media to cover, irrespective of her feelings. Trump’s the president, there’s a legal battle surrounding what he did and didn’t do with Daniels, there may be criminal charges related to an unreported campaign contribution, there may even be someone connected to POTUS who threatened Daniels years ago. It’s news. The news doesn’t stop because it’s painful for the First Lady. But trying to drag her into it knowing how painful it must be for her is baffling. And dragging her squarely into the middle of it by asking her to blow up her marriage as a political act when there are a million more pressing personal considerations to a decision like that, starting with the welfare of her son, borders on cruel.

If you take this argument seriously, it would make Melania Trump — the victim in Trump’s alleged affair — a bad guy for choosing to save her marriage and keep her family intact. Don’t conservatives normally oppose divorce? If a marriage is broken beyond repair and you need to leave, okay, but if it can be salvaged, salvage it. Family is too important, especially for young children, to be lightly discarded. Watching this, you would think Melania has a higher duty to the Women Of America than she does to herself or Barron. I wouldn’t ask Hillary Clinton to make a decision about her marriage based on how it might “inspire” 10-year-old girls or serve the cause of female empowerment, and Hillary’s a million times more ripe for a critique like that than Melania Trump is. She is, as Cupp notes, a feminist icon and someone who’s harbored political ambitions of her own for decades.

But even Hillary’s entitled to make the most personal decisions for personal reasons.

In an age when dogmatic politics encroaches on personal life remorselessly, you would think conservatives would want to defend the personal sphere, particularly in matters involving family. Yet here we are. Oh well. Enjoy a nice reminder in the clip of Hillary’s fake southern accent circa 1992, at least.

.@secupp: "Melania should do for this generation of girls what Hillary did not do for mine – and leave her jerk of a husband." https://t.co/9gKjJ8qpeo

— SE Cupp Unfiltered (@UnfilteredSE) March 27, 2018