The NY Post Just Re-Published Nude Photos of Melania Trump From 1995

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Melania Trump is about to find herself at the center of yet another scandal due to her modeling career.

Earlier tonight, the New York Post published three photos of Melania from 1995 where she’s posing nude while frowning and standing up very straight. “THE OGLE OFFICE,” screams the headline. It’s the cover for tomorrow’s Sunday edition of the Post.

Can’t wait to celebrate the lord’s day by watching yet another Melania-centric slut-shaming shit-show unfold.

The photographer who shot the pics, Alé de Basseville, told the Post that Melania was kind and professional throughout the shoot, adding, “I think it is important to show the beauty and the freedom of the woman, and I am very proud of these pictures because they celebrate Melania’s beauty.”

Beyond the punny headline, there’s not too much overt judgment or slut-shaming in their coverage. They merely point out that we’ve “never seen a potential First Lady like this!” Still, it’s obvious that the reader is supposed to make that connection for them. The Post clearly published these photos for shock value and to discredit the Trump campaign.

The publication of these 21-year-old photos will likely result in judgment and slut-shaming from plenty of people, which is a bummer. It also puts anyone who considers herself a sex-positive feminist in the position of having to stick up for a Trump, which is pretty interesting.

Still, this comes at an awkward time. Because of Donald Trump’s repugnant comments about the Khan family — Muslim parents of a Marine who died fighting for the U.S. — it seemed like even his supporters might have been thinking twice about him. Not to mention, the Democratic convention in general seemed to be shifting the tide toward Hillary Clinton.

But now there’s a danger we’ll spend a news cycle or two talking about nude photos. If that’s the case, we’re just devolving once more into the reality show circus that the election has so often been. These photos have nothing to do with politics or even Trump’s character. If the Post’s goal was to discredit the Trumps, they picked the worst moment to do so.

The Donald himself has already spoken to the Post about the new photos. Here’s what he had to say:

“Melania was one of the most successful models and she did many photo shoots, including for covers and major magazines. This was a picture taken for a European magazine prior to my knowing Melania. In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common.”

Honestly, good on him for taking the “yeah, so what?” approach popularized by Madonna and Marilyn Monroe during their own nude photo scandals. As we’ve covered extensively before, posing nude doesn’t hurt anybody — it’s the judgment from other people that’s harmful.

Still, we’ll see if Trump ruins it by threatening to release dirt about Post owner Rupert Murdoch’s wife, which is how he so classily responded to a March nude photo scandal involving Ted Cruz supporters.

Then again, there’s also the possibility that this could blow over. As mentioned, we’ve all already seen Melania mostly naked thanks to her British GQ shoot, which bubbled to the surface back in March when Ted Cruz supporters tried to use the photos as proof that she was unfit to be First Lady.

(Sidenote: the URL slug for that GQ shoot is /donald-trump-melania-trump-knauss-first-lady-erections. Stay classy, British GQ.)

But let’s face it: the only real crime here (besides the Post being dickish) is the quality of the photos. Melania deserves better than this. They look like the photog’s intern was in charge of the dark room that day and tried to get a little too artsy during the exposure process. I daresay they’re worse than her Twitter selfies.

But hey, I guess every shoot can’t be Melania posing pregnant in a bikini on her Trump jet’s stairs shot by Annie Leibovitz. Cuz yeah, that happened and it was great.

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