Remember that queasy feeling you got as a kid in a low-budget haunted house after you stuck your hand into a bowl of brains, aka, wet spaghetti? I suspect Melania Trump knows it well because she appears to get it every time her husband reaches for her hand.

The first lady of the United States looked especially queasy this week when President Donald Trump tried to make skin-to-skin contact with her outside the White House where the couple greeted French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, who had just arrived on official state business.

Melania didn’t exactly swat the president’s hand away as she appeared to do on a tarmac in Tel Aviv last year.

But she didn’t embrace it either.

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Instead, cameras caught the powerful pair engaged in a very awkward, one-sided finger-courtship in which the prez’s pinky did a little dance around the first lady’s rigid fingers to no avail.

Trump, whose digits fit comfortably enough around a golf club and who has no problem thumbing away on Twitter could not and cannot seem to get a grip on his beloved’s palm.

But in all honesty, why are we still surprised by this? It’s fairly obvious that Melania doesn’t appear to like her husband; it’s by now common knowledge that they have about as much warmth for one another as the Boston Bruins have for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

And I don’t have to count the reasons why. Two words will suffice: Stormy Daniels. As Esquire pointed out a few days ago, the first lady looked happier at Barbara Bush’s funeral than she did at her own husband’s inauguration.

What’s less obvious, however, is why the president and first lady bother to keep up with appearances. Why don’t they just call it quits already? I know what you’re thinking: this is America we’re talking about, where average citizens get divorced all the time but politicians must maintain an unnaturally wholesome family image—even when scandals emerge that contradict and shatter that image. Aren’t the Trumps obligated to stick together if not for their son Barron, then for their conservative base? Well judging by the current political climate, maybe not.

It’s true that American conservatives tore a strip off Bill Clinton in the 1990s when news of his infidelity broke, but on moral matters concerning the current commander in chief, cognitive dissonance is king. You’d think for example that America’s Evangelical Christian community might overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump’s alleged extra-marital affair with a porn actress (not to mention his alleged penchant for sexual harassment and his behaviour in general) but when it comes to this particular president, many Evangelical leaders are blasé about the whole monogamy thing. As religious studies scholar David R. Brockman explains in the Texas Observer, evangelical support for Trump can be attributed in part to the fact that some prominent church leaders, including Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, have recently taken a liking to a brand of Lutheran inspired political theology dating back to the 16th century. That theology, known as “Two Kingdoms,” puts forth the idea that Christian values should be applied to ordinary individual people, not governments.

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Brockman writes: “As far as Jeffress and his followers are concerned, so long as the president maintains what they understand as order and punishes what they consider evil, his personal moral failings are irrelevant.” If this is the case, his failure in marriage should be irrelevant too. Which is to say, it’s conceivable that Don and Melania—and their duelling digits—could go their separate ways and Trump’s social conservative following might not bat an eyelash. It helps after all that despite his own thoroughly impure lifestyle, the president is in their corner on matters of actual policy. He is opposed to transgender rights, he is anti-choice, and just this month his administration announced plans to fund abstinence education programs for teenagers. What’s not to like?

The irony in this hypocritical embrace of Trump by many social conservatives is that it offers Donald and Melania an opportunity to live in far greater sin than any presidential couple before them—and to do so openly. Personally, having seen video footage of them standing next to one another I recommend they divorce. But if divorce is too messy and too expensive, I suggest they try an open marriage absent any happy-family posturing. Trump will be able to court, in the light of day, the Brazzers actress of his dreams. And most importantly, Melania will be able to step out in front of the cameras with the immensely comforting knowledge that her husband will keep his hand to himself.

Correction - April 27, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Robert Jeffress’ surname in one reference.

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