Melania Trump has been promoting her memoir Melania, which comes out on October 8, primarily via kooky, conspiracy-theory-laden videos she drops on social media. But today, she took a more conventional approach, sitting for her first interview in two years. Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt’s questions weren’t exactly hard-hitting; at one point, she gushed about Donald Trump, “He’s just strong! He’s not afraid to talk about the way it really is.” But, intentionally or not, the interview did provide some insight into our most mysterious former First Lady. Here’s what we learned.
You might think that Melania isn’t thrilled about potentially returning to the White House just because she skipped basically all of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign events (except those she was paid to attend).
But when asked how she feels about her husband running again, Melania said, “I support him. I know how passionate he is to make America great again.”
Melania learned about the July 13 assassination attempt via a phone call from a staffer. She had been watching Donald’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on TV, but she hit pause minutes before the shooting. “Something, I guess looked over me, so I didn’t really see live, but maybe three minutes, few minutes later,” she said.
Melania found out about this month’s second assassination attempt at Mar-a-Lago from TV reports. (She was in New York at the time.)
“I think both of the events, they were really a miracle,” she said, “if you really think about it. The July 13 was a miracle. Like that much [shows a few millimeters with her fingers], and he could not be with us.”
Earhardt only asked Melania one mildly provocative question: Why didn’t the Secret Service do more to protect her husband, particularly if they were aware of an alleged Iranian threat against him? “If they knew there was this plot, why didn’t they sweep the golf course?” she said.
Melania had already praised the Secret Service agents who were with her husband on September 15 and made no attempt to answer this question. Instead, she reiterated points she made in one of her book-promotion videos, suggesting the mainstream media and Democrats are to blame for the violence against her husband.
“You know, it’s interesting how quiet everything became,” she said. “All of the mainstream media. There were a few days reporting about July 13 event and then everything then became quiet, so I had a lot of questions, what’s going on? This is not normal.”
“And is it really shocking that all this outrageous violence goes against my husband?” she continued. “Especially that we hear the leaders from the opposition party and mainstream media branding him as a threat to democracy, calling him vile names, they’re only fueling a toxic atmosphere and giving power to all of these people who want to do harm to him. This needs to stop.”
When asked why she did not speak at the Republican National Convention this summer, Melania said she felt she’d said everything she needed to in the two-page letter she released the day after Trump’s near-assassination.
“Do you want to talk about why you decided not to come out onstage and give a speech like you did in 2016?” Earhardt asked.
“It was my decision. I think was just the time. I think was the right time,” Melania replied. “In the days before, I wrote a beautiful letter to America, and I think in one way, that letter was my speech.”
Melania mentioned the letter again while admonishing the media and Democrats for criticizing her husband, saying, “The country needs to unite, and I encourage everybody to read my letter that I wrote on July 14 again.”
When asked what she wishes people knew about her husband, Melania replied, “That he is really a family man. He loves his family. He loves this country and all he wants is to build better and prosperous.”
That point really has been lost amid the tabloid coverage of Trump’s extramarital affair in the ’90s, the 20-plus sexual-misconduct allegations against him, the conviction over hush-money payments to a porn star, and Trump being found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll.
Earhardt asked Melanie about her “reaction to Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee,” but I guess we’ll never know what that was because rather than answering the question, the former First Lady ably rattled off Trump campaign talking points:
Well, how I see it is the records speak for itself. The country is suffering. People are not able to buy usual necessities for their families. We have wars going on around the world. Soldiers are dying, they were dying under this administration because of weak leadership. The border is open and dangerous. A lot of fentanyl is coming over, killing our youth. It is very hard to see, and the economy, it’s really not great. Inflation is high, and if we compare these four years under this administration to four years under my husband as commander-in-chief, he was leading the country through peace, through strength, and the border was safer than ever before, we didn’t have any wars, people were prospering, they had jobs, they could support their families.
She acknowledged that we may have to put up with some “strong tweets” if her husband is reelected:
So American people need to decide what they really want. Maybe some strong tweets, but everything else great for this country. So it’s all in American people’s hands on November 5.
But Melania can’t recall any other problems during the first Trump administration.
Here’s the full interview:
