Twitter critics claim Melania Trump's coat in 9/11 tribute looks like plane flying into tower
President Donald Trump's tribute tweet for the 9/11 anniversary garnered attention for the wrong reasons Wednesday: The picture showed first lady Melania Trump wearing a coat that trolls were certain showed a plane flying into a tower.
It didn't.
The picture in the tweet was not taken Wednesday during the 9/11 memorial ceremonies the Trumps participated in at the White House and the Pentagon, under sunny skies. The first lady wore a short black Ralph Lauren dress for those.
Instead, the foggy picture in the president's tweet shows the couple from the back standing on some kind of overlook before an unfamiliar landscape. Trump is wearing a long black coat trimmed in white thread.
"We will never forget," it says under an American flag. The first lady's Twitter account posted a version of the picture, too.
If you enlarge the picture, you can make out the white trim tracing across her back, on the coat belt, and up and down the split in the coat back, which is closed with a button tab.
Aha! It shows a tower with a plane flying into it, declared eagle-eyed users alert to anything that can be used to criticize POTUS via FLOTUS.
Melania Trump, after all, was harshly mocked in 2018 when she wore a jacket with the words "I REALLY DON'T CARE DO U?" scrawled on the back for a humanitarian visit to migrant children separated from their parents at the border.
Critics have been on alert ever since, in search of FLOTUS outfits to disparage.
"I’m sure I’m not the first one to spot this but who in the world thought it was a good idea for Melania to wear this coat in the 9/11 photo. It legit looks like an object is flying into a tower or the Washington Monument," tweeted Ashley Spivey.
Some of the critics couched their observations in the form of a question.
"Is...is that a plane crashing into one of the twin towers in the back of Melania’s coat?!?," Abe Caldwell tweeted.
"Not to sound like a complete conspiracy nut...But does anyone else see a plane flying through a tower on Melania's coat?" Kittie Hill tweeted.
Twitter users had fun posting enlarged versions of the photo, some of them doctored in obscene ways suggesting that Trump was trolling her husband. (Even though he was the one who posted the tweet.)
"Melania wears a coat in thier 911 post that literally looks like a plane flew into a tower.
Did they fire all the stylists too or is Melania just the biggest troll ever??" one user asked.
At least one user liked what he saw.
"Melania‘s jacket has the Washington monument stitching with a button flap on lower back. Very cool coat," tweeted Charles Newby, a self-identified Reagan conservative.
Some users wondered what the fuss was about.
"That's just a vent on the back of Melania's coat. It has a button to keep it closed," tweeted one user.
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham, the former press secretary for FLOTUS who now works for both Trumps, had this to say about this latest kerfuffle over the first lady's clothes.
"It's ridiculous."
