{"id":51803,"date":"2017-11-11T04:51:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T04:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=51803"},"modified":"2017-11-11T04:51:05","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T04:51:05","slug":"melania-trump-visits-military-families-in-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/melania-trump-visits-military-families-in-alaska.html","title":{"rendered":"Melania Trump visits military families in Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Melania Trump visits military families in Alaska<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Melania Trump might have been a fashion model at one time in her life, but she had no qualms ripping off a chunk of messy play dough and getting her hands dirty, just like the three preschoolers seated at the table with her Friday at a military base in Alaska.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Trump expertly rubbed the material between her two hands into a perfect sphere and then rolled the red small ball on the table to the girl seated across from her.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The nation\u2019s first lady then moved to the table to her right and made a harmonica out of ordinary household materials, held together with a rubber band.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">It\u2019s not the heady stuff of the official visit with her husband to Asia but hundreds packed the Arctic Oasis Community Center to get a glimpse of the first lady as she toured programs for children and youth at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. She made a refueling stop at the Anchorage base en route back to Washington, D.C., after spending the last week with President Donald Trump in South Korea and China. The president continued his official visit to Asia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Melania Trump, wearing a three-quarter length winter coat over a brown turtle neck and white slacks, spent about 35 minutes visiting with children and teachers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cAny time we have an opportunity to share with others what our program does and the educational basis for all the activities that we do, it\u2019s a chance to show our story and to share with other individuals how we serve our military population,\u201d said Tamra De Benedetto, who oversees all activities at the base for children under age 18.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Trump viewed items children made on a 3D printer, saw sewing projects, and watched as they constructed fish out of compact discs, glitter and gems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cEvery program we offer has an educational purpose and a reason for why we do it,\u201d De Benedetto said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">De Benedetto said she exchanged a few private words with Trump. \u201cShe is just delightful and very genuine,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Trump didn\u2019t make a public speech or address reporters, but did take time to shake hands and talk briefly with parents and military members who flocked to the community center.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Paige Wyse and her husband, Air Force Tech Sgt. Matthew Wyse, brought their 4-year-old son Brantley so he could make a fish with the first lady. They found out about Trump\u2019s visit Thursday and tried to explain to their son who she was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">He made the correlation when she explained to him that the visitor is the president\u2019s wife, and then he became excited.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cHe was like, \u2018Oh, wow. OK,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Air Force Master Sgt. David Jennings brought his wife, Lindsay, and their two daughters, Abbigail and Annabelle, to see the first lady. He said dignitaries stop at the base all the time, but base personnel rarely are able to get close.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">But in this case, the family got a good view of the visit, and they took pictures to remember the rare event.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cA great family memory here,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">There are 14,000 active duty soldiers and airmen stationed at the joint Army and Air Force facility in Anchorage. With their family members, that number swells to 29,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">There are currently 1,800 service members deployed all over the globe, including 1,200 in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/melania-trump-visits-military-families-in-alaska\/2017\/11\/10\/ccb3f222-c67e-11e7-9922-4151f5ca6168_story.html?utm_term=.59baa1300ab4<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/melania-trump-visits-military-families-in-alaska.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melania Trump visits military families in Alaska Melania Trump might have been a fashion model at one time in her life, but she had no qualms ripping off a chunk of messy play dough and getting her hands dirty, just like the three preschoolers seated at the table with her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[8070,98235,3301,3299,3303,98236],"class_list":["post-51803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska","tag-melania-trump-visits-military-families-in-alaska","tag-north-america","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-us-alaska-melania-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}