Former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts related to hush money payments he made to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, while his wife Melania was at home with their infant son. Prosecutors said the payments were an attempt to illegally interfere with the 2016 election. Trump’s team had a different explanation: that he didn’t have the affair in the first place, but also was still trying to conceal allegations of it from his beloved wife, anyway.

The “Melania defense” didn’t work on the jury. But it is one of many examples of a telling dynamic: Powerful political men pushing the moral responsibility of their own actions onto their wives.

To Trump’s credit, he didn’t blame Melania for his alleged affairs—one with Daniels, and a more prolonged relationship with a Playboy model who says she saw Trump while Melania was pregnant. Instead, Trump denied culpability entirely, while suggesting that the hush money payment was for her benefit and protection. The same can’t be said of Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, whose defense in his trial for an alleged bribery and corruption scheme boils down to “my wife did it, blame her.” Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito has taken a similar tack since evidence surfaced of an upside-down American flag hanging outside of his Virginia home, a symbol of solidarity with those who believe the 2020 election was stolen. That was soon followed by reporting about another flag, representing the extreme Christian right, hanging outside of his New Jersey beach house. The flags, Alito has said, are the work of his wife Martha-Ann. “My wife is fond of flying flags,” Alito wrote in a letter explaining why he would not recuse himself from cases related to the same issues the flags represent. “I am not.”

Wives, amirite?

These efforts........

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