“Busted!” tweeted Bette Midler, hours after First Lady Melania Trump finished speaking at the second night of the 2020 Republican National Convention. Bette, 74, had been live-tweeting the Aug. 25 event and felt like the voting public needed to be reminded how Melania, 50, also joined Donald Trump, 74, in demanding to see then-President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The “From A Distance” singer re-tweeted a clip from a March 2011 episode of The Joy Behar Show, in which Melania disputed that Obama’s “certificate of live birth” wasn’t an actual birth certificate. “In one way, it will be very easy, if President Obama just shows it,” said Melania. Even after Joy Behar insisted that Obama had shown proof he was an American citizen, Melania said, “We feel it’s different than a birth certificate. ”
“Here’s FLOTUS, in her previous incarnation as a racist and a birther. Now she’s getting the #SaintMelania treatment. Don’t fall for it. She’s no [Jackie Onassis Kennedy], no matter how hard they try,” added Bette when sharing the clip. Oddly enough, Joy, 77, brought up “The Divine Miss M” in 2011 when talking about how, if certificates of live birth weren’t valid, then no one born in Hawaii could run for president. “Bette Midler if finished!” shouted Joy, referencing the fact that the music icon was born in Honolulu.
As Melania was giving her speech, Bette fired off a few zingers at the First Lady. “Melania lacks warmth so severely that I just had to turn my AC down,” she tweeted. “We visited places of great significance,” Bette wrote, repeating Melania’s words, “and I swatted his hand away at every stop.” Bette wondered, “why are they promoting this awful person? Was it in her contract? She says it feels just like yesterday they were at the first convention. Maybe for you, Mel. For the rest of us, every day has been a horrible slog through the 9th Circle of Hell.”
“Melania took all the color out of the rose garden, but Don tried his utmost to bring some back with that greasy bronzer,” added Bette. Not all her jokes landed, though. When she tweeted how Melania “can speak several words in a few languages” and that they should “get that illegal alien off the stage,” many right-wing commentators and publications pounced on this and called her “racist.” Bette also didn’t do herself any favors when she tweeted, “Oh, God. She still can’t speak English.”
While Melania avoided the mistake in 2016 by choosing to not boost one of Michelle Obama’s old speeches, her 45-minute address did raise some eyebrows, especially when she said she was most proud of the fact that her husband was “honest.” Despite the Washington Post noting that Trump has made at least 20,000 false statements or misleading claims since taking office, Melania said that her husband delivers “total honesty” because it’s “what we deserve as citizens from our president.”