Einstein Wasn’t Available, So We Called Melania

Because what screams ‘extraordinary ability’ louder than posing with a Gucci handbag on a yacht?

Let’s get one thing straight right out of the gate: if Melania Trump is the new standard of “extraordinary ability,” then I demand retroactive genius status for every woman who’s ever mastered the smize on a budget and evaded the family WhatsApp group chat for more than two years. That’s talent. That’s survival. But “Einstein-level?” Honey, please.

You may have heard the recent congressional ruckus where Representative Jasmine Crockett, wielding the power of logic like a freshly sharpened machete, revisited the curious case of Melania’s EB-1 visa.

For those of you who’ve been busy trying to outsmart your AI toaster or simply blissfully unaware, the EB-1 is also known as the Einstein Visa.

It’s typically reserved for people whose brains have been proven, under pressure and peer review, to be made of something sturdier than collagen and entitlement. Nobel laureates. Pulitzer prize winners. People who can spell “Pulitzer.”

But in 2001, a mysterious force. . . let’s call it white privilege wearing Louboutin heels. . . swept Melania Knauss into the hallowed halls of American citizenship, past the lines of medical researchers, chess champions, and tech prodigies. And somehow, we all blinked and said, “Sure, why not? Maybe she cured loneliness in billionaires.”

I probably know what you’re thinking. “She was a model! Maybe the EB-1 includes runway achievement?” If that’s the case, then I demand a full reevaluation of every drag queen in the continental United States! They’ve certainly done more for art, fashion, and public morale than one sullen smirk in a cute Ralph Lauren blazer.

This is a good time to revisit what qualifies one for the Einstein Visa.

According to U.S. immigration guidelines, it’s for individuals with “sustained national or international acclaim,” like Olympic medalists or people who have published articles that weren’t ghostwritten and plagiarized from Wikipedia. And unless Melania’s 1996 swimsuit spread in GQ was a diplomatic act I somehow missed in AP Government, I’m not seeing the “sustained” or the “acclaim.

But this isn’t just about Melania, of course. This is about the hypocrisy so dense it could be used to build border walls. While her husband bellows like a demonic sousaphone about “bad hombres” and “illegals flooding our schools with tortillas,” he’s comfortably married to a woman whose immigration story includes enough mystery to fill a QAnon Reddit thread.

This man is literally screaming about undocumented workers while spooning with an EB-1 “extraordinary talent” who makes Jeopardy! contestants look like community theater.

Now, if Melania had, say, revolutionized Slovenian-American relations, written the great American novel, or even just looked interested during one White House Christmas tour, I might cut her some slack. But let’s be real: she spent four years decorating the People’s House like it was hosting a funeral for democracy, and even her “Be Best” campaign sounded like the result of a toddler being asked to summarize a TED Talk.

Meanwhile, immigrants with actual skills…scientists, teachers, nurses, software engineers…are being stuffed into legal meat grinders for daring to apply. And yet, a woman whose greatest public achievement may very well be not slapping her husband in front of cameras (again, admirable) gets a genius-level pass?

You don’t need to be Einstein to realize something stinks. And it isn’t the imported roses in the Rose Garden.

So yes, Representative Crockett was right to ask. And we should all be asking: if Melania is the bar, what the hell happened to the pole vault?

The math, as Crockett said, ain’t mathin’. But maybe that’s the point. When grift is the curriculum, mediocrity becomes merit. And suddenly, genius wears heels, speaks five rehearsed phrases, and keeps her husband’s secrets like state documents in a Mar-a-Lago closet.

Welcome to America, where being “extraordinary” just means knowing the right billionaire. Maybe it’s this way everywhere. I don’t know.