
I watched several different videos that were taken at differing angles because I was so aghast at Melania’s expression change. trump turns around smiling and looking triumphant, and Melania is gazing at him and smiling the whole time. He looks at Ivanka, and you can see her give him back the “eye five”, then he looks down at Melania and says “Not you”.
That’s when her face falls as he turns around. “Not you” is a very typical emotional abuse technique. I’ve seen it, I’ve had it done to me. I know what happened there.
I will speak to a couple of the questions that were coming up a lot before I turned off the comments:
The “eye five” is an expression I made up in an effort to keep the description short— I was referring to raising eyebrows a few times, opening eyes wide with excitement— the equivalent of a “high five” with facial expression.
“Not you” — When trump said that to Melania, he was informing her that she was not included in the emotional festivities, that she was not included in his joy, that she was not part of the moment (the implication being that he’s “still mad” at her for some real or imagined infraction of his malignant narcissist’s rule book), and her crestfallen expression was exactly what he intended to produce.
When he turned back around, facing the camera, he was clearly very satisfied with himself. The reaction of Melania’s son is because he heard trump say that to her, as he’s probably heard on other occasions, and he wasn’t pleased. The “Not you” is a common emotional abuse technique.