The First Lady participated in a tree planting at the White House yesterday, using a golden shovel and wearing a $4,000 dollar dress. Pop quiz: circle the most surprising part of that sentence. Darling, this is how you garden. The plants don't respect you if you don't serve them fashion as well as fertilizer. Everyone knows that. You think Johnny Appleseed was stomping around the countryside wearing a nice dress and a crown? Of course he was! Your lewk better be flawless if you're out in the forest. Nothing shades you like a disapproving apple tree.

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Mrs. Trump was participating in a planting ceremony for a sapling grown from the Eisenhower Oak that was removed from the White House property this year. In exchange for planting this one (1) tree, the Trump administration has agreed to melt one (1) glacier to counterbalance any positive effect the tree has.

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She wore the ensemble, sans shovel, earlier in the day to greet the president and first lady of Kenya, so this can also be classified as a transition lewk. When you have to be the wife of a world leader at 2 p.m. and a tree seeder at 4 p.m., the only option is an A-line skirt and red bottoms. It's how diplomacy is done.



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I'm not sure what part of this ensemble is most impressive. Is it the red bottoms, with a spiked heel for aerating the soil? Is it the Romantic Garden brocade Valentino skirt, originally priced at $4,000, with the flower pattern inspired by Cuba (!!!)? No, I think it's the shovel. The golden shovel. Like a metaphor that's beating me over the head.

You have to respect this family for staying on theme. Presuming that theme is "We just really love gold, like a couple of villains in a morality play."



Trump Tower is notorious covered in floor-to-ceiling gold and gold-adjacent materials.

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And who can forget the time Trump asked the Guggenheim for a Van Gogh and, instead he was offered a Golden Toilet.

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So this golden shovel is part of a growing set of totems that future historians will find hard to believe.

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Remember when Megan Mullally and Trump sang the Green Acres theme song in character as Karen Walker and... Donald Trump? Buried somewhere in there was a joke and beneath that joke... the future!

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Wow, it's true that you either die a hero or you live long enough to see weird skits from past Emmy awards shows play themselves out in reality.



This is not the first time the first lady has set the bees a-buzzing with her garden garments. Last fall, she harvested vegetables in black converse and a $1,380 Balmain tartan shirt like a total normal.

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This most recent look is the kind of horticultural glow-up the people demand as they claw at the gates of Versailles.

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R. Eric Thomas R Eric Thomas is a Senior Staff Writer at ELLE.com, home of his daily humor column "Eric Reads the News," which skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude.

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