Much Ado About Melania

A year after moving into the White House with her young son to rejoin her husband, Melania Trump -- this most enigmatic of presidential wives -- demonstrated once more this week she is anything but the typical US first lady.

As the United States grapples with a political crisis sparked by the forcible separation of migrant children from their parents, the 48-year-old ex-model and Slovenian immigrant flew to Texas in a bid to quell the firestorm.

Except her stated desire for children to reunite with their parents as quickly as possible was overshadowed by her choice of plane-boarding attire -- a jacket emblazoned with the words "I really don't care. Do U?"

Instead of feting the rare frugal choice by the wife of a billionaire -- a $39 off-the-peg number from Zara -- the internet was convulsed with outrage over the choice and speculation as to why she wore it.

Was it a pointed message to President Donald Trump, accused of sleeping with a porn star soon after their son Barron was born? Could it have been aimed at the press, as her husband later tweeted, a rebuke to the "fake news media"?

At worst it was callous to the children stranded without parents, at best a distraction from a well-intentioned visit, critics complained.

"It's a jacket. There was no hidden message," hit back spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham. Indeed, nothing hidden about graffiti-style capital letters scrawled across her back, scoffed critics.

Upon her return to Joint Base Andrews, the mother-of-one deplaned wearing the same jacket, defiant in the face of the internet uproar.

It was a week that saw Melania make a rare foray into politics, saying that she hated to see families separated. Stopping short of criticizing her husband's policies, she called for bipartisan immigration reform to fix the issue.

She then reportedly lobbied her husband to reverse his policy, culminating in Wednesday's executive order banning the separation of children, but with no guidance on how to reunite the 2,300 already split from their relatives.