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‘We Are Moving On’: Melania Trump Breaks Near Silence to Defend Husband
‘They’re Lies’: Melania Trump Rejects Women’s Claims That Husband Groped Them
(about 3 hours later)
Three months after she was humiliated when she delivered a plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Melania Trump emerged from near-silence Monday to defend her husband during the worst stretch of his candidacy, saying “he was egged on” by a television personality to boast about forcing himself on women.
Melania Trump, who has been all but invisible as her husband confronts a campaign crisis over allegations that he sexually assaulted women, emerged on Monday to forcefully defend him and question the honesty of the women making the accusations.
Ms. Trump’s remarks justifying her husband’s comments in 2005 to Billy Bush, then an anchor of “Access Hollywood,” came as the Trump campaign has turned to her as its latest weapon to rescue Donald J. Trump’s candidacy among increasingly skeptical female voters.
Ms. Trump, in an extensive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, said the women who had accused Donald J. Trump of groping and kissing them were lying, and likened her husband to a teenage boy who engages in macho boasting.
It was “boy talk, and he was led on — like, egged on — from the host to say dirty and bad stuff,” she said in an interview with CNN.
She echoed her husband’s complaint that he was the victim of a broad conspiracy between the news media and the Clinton campaign.
Mr. Trump’s poll numbers with women are perilously low, as he faces a historic gender gap. For many weeks, Mr. Trump’s aides had hoped that his wife would be able to help present a softer face for the razor-edged candidate.
“I believe my husband, I believe my husband — it was all organized from the opposition,” Ms. Trump said. “They can never check the background of these women. They don’t have any facts.”
But Ms. Trump has never enjoyed the political stage, even before her tarnished convention appearance, when she faced a firestorm of criticism for lifting lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 address to the Democratic National Convention. She has been absent from the campaign trail since, save for appearances at the first two general election debates, and has been spending time with the couple’s young son, Barron.
Her appearance comes as Mr. Trump and his aides grapple with the worst stretch of the campaign so far, after the airing 10 days ago of an “Access Hollywood” recording from 2005 that captured Mr. Trump bragging to the host Billy Bush that he kisses women without invitation and that he can grab women’s genitals because he is a “star.”
But on Monday, she broke from weeks of avoiding interviews, saying that an “Access Hollywood” recording of her husband bragging about groping women was “not the man that I know” and that former President Bill Clinton’s history with women was fair game.
Ms. Trump, 46, called the exchange between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bush “boy talk,” and said Mr. Trump had been “egged on” by the host “to say dirty and bad stuff.”
In the recording, Mr. Trump bragged in lewd terms that he could take advantage of women sexually because he was “a star.”
But she stressed that she believed that Mr. Trump was simply being boastful and did not engage in the behavior he described.
“Those words, they were offensive to me, and they were inappropriate,” Ms. Trump said in a separate interview with the Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt. “And he apologized to me.”
“Sometimes I say I have two boys at home: I have my young son, and I have my husband,” she said with a slight laugh. “But I know how some men talk, and that’s how I saw it, yes.”
Ms. Trump said she had accepted his apology. “We are moving on.”
Mr. Trump’s aides have been eager for his wife to make a public show of support for him, especially after the “Access Hollywood” recording dominated several media cycles and drove some Republican elected officials to abandon his candidacy.
The campaign decided to deploy Ms. Trump as a character witness for her embattled husband as top aides have struggled with how to respond not only to the “Access Hollywood” tape but also to the subsequent emergence of several women who said Mr. Trump had forced himself on them. This weekend, the campaign began discussing options for showcasing Ms. Trump publicly, leading to the two interviews she gave, to Fox News and CNN.
A week ago, Mr. Trump’s adult children, along with aides to his campaign, urged Ms. Trump to agree to a sit-down interview with her husband, an echo of the “60 Minutes” interview that Bill and Hillary Clinton did in 1992 after sexual infidelity allegations arose against Mr. Clinton. That appearance helped stabilize Mr. Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Ms. Trump, Mr. Trump’s third wife, issued a statement a day after the tape was initially aired, and she said she was offended. That weekend, aides to Mr. Trump, as well as his adult children, urged Ms. Trump to agree to a sit-down interview with her husband. But she had little interest in it, and the idea died.
But Ms. Trump had little interest in it, and the idea died.
In the Fox interview, she made clear she was standing by her husband, and attributed the comments to behavior from an entertainer who was not a politician. “This is not the man that I know,” she said.
Ms. Trump has never enjoyed the political stage, and was stung by media coverage in July, when it was revealed that her anticipated Republican National Convention speech borrowed lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 address to the Democratic National Convention. She has been absent from the campaign trail since, save for brief appearances at the first two general election debates, and has been spending time with the couple’s young son, Barron.
“For a successful businessman, entrepreneur, entertainer to achieving so much in his life, being in so many shows, so many tapes, it’s very hard to run for public office. And he did this anyway,” she said. “He said: ‘I want to help American people. I want to keep America safe. I want to bring back jobs, bring back economy, so our children, our futures will be the best way possible.’”
She put out a written statement of support for her husband after the tape surfaced. But with Mr. Trump’s favorability among women perilously low, his advisers wanted Ms. Trump to do more.
But in the CNN interview, with Anderson Cooper, Ms. Trump explained away the offending remarks, suggesting her husband did not know he was being recorded. “As you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on — it was only a mike,” she said. “And I wonder if they even knew that the mike was on.”
Seated in the family’s penthouse atop Trump Tower, Ms. Trump seemed occasionally ill at ease but determined to convey several points: that her husband is a gentleman, that the media is out to get him and that she is staying strong despite the ugliness. She showed an ability to remain on message that her husband sometimes lacks.
At his debate with Hillary Clinton last week, Mr. Trump insisted under questioning by Mr. Cooper that he had never actually engaged in the lewd behavior he bragged about in the “Access Hollywood” tape, an assertion undercut by the women who subsequently came forward.
“I watched TV hour after hour bashing him,” Ms. Trump said of the television coverage the weekend the 11-year-old recording was first revealed.
Mr. Trump has vehemently denied the claims of his accusers, calling them part of a conspiracy led partly by news media outlets, particularly CNN and The New York Times. Yet despite Mr. Trump’s criticism of CNN and its reporting, Ms. Trump still selected Mr. Cooper to interview her on Monday.
She said her husband was defending himself against the accusations because “they’re lies.”
Before the debate, Mr. Trump held a news conference with three women who have accused Mr. Clinton of sexual assault or rape in the past, and he gave them tickets to sit in the debate hall.
She also said her husband was approached by many women who were sexually forward with him.
Asked whether it was fair to bring up Mr. Clinton’s past, Ms. Trump said, “Well, if they bring up my past, why not?” She was alluding to a television ad run during the Republican Party’s nominating fight that featured a nude photo spread from Ms. Trump’s days as a supermodel.
“I see many, many women coming to him and giving the phone numbers and, you know, want to work for him or inappropriate stuff from women,” she said. “And they know he’s married.”
Ms. Trump’s remarks were released as her husband was appearing in Wisconsin, the home state of the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, who recently said he would no longer defend the Republican nominee and was solely focused on keeping control of the House.
Ms. Trump steadily answered most of Mr. Cooper’s polite but probing questions, though she suggested that some information she would keep private, including the details of the conversation the couple had after the tape came out.
The two men occupy polar ends of the party, with Mr. Trump all angry populism, and Mr. Ryan, the highest elected Republican official, fashioning himself a man of policies and ideas.
She also taped an interview for “Fox and Friends” that will appear Tuesday morning.
Mr. Trump’s public and private demeanor has grown increasingly aggressive and erratic as he has slipped in the polls in recent weeks; several national polls in the past week have found Mrs. Clinton with a widening lead over Mr. Trump among likely voters.
Mr. Trump has vehemently denied the claims of his accusers, calling them elements of a conspiracy led partly by news media outlets, particularly CNN and The New York Times. Yet despite Mr. Trump’s criticism of CNN and its reporting, and even as some of his supporters at a rally on Monday used an anti-CNN chant, Ms. Trump still selected Mr. Cooper to interview her.
In Twitter messages and at his rallies, Mr. Trump has increasingly warned — with no evidence — that the election will be “rigged” or “stolen,” frequently implying that black voters are the likely culprits, even as leaders and officials from both parties have come forward to refute his claims.
Asked on Fox whether it was fair for her husband to bring up Mr. Clinton’s past, Ms. Trump said, “Well, if they bring up my past, why not?” She was alluding to a television ad run during the Republican Party’s nominating fight that featured a nude photo spread from Ms. Trump’s days as a model.
Rather than following the more conventional path for a presidential nominee with just three weeks until Election Day, or trying to woo and persuade undecided, independent and politically moderate voters, Mr. Trump has instead retrenched, refocusing on a strategy from the primaries of roiling his base.
Speaking to Mr. Cooper, Ms. Trump repeatedly denounced what she saw as the meanness and inaccuracy of media accounts about her, and she said she would like to work to protect children from the toxic dangers of negativity and anger on social media.
He appears to be hoping to turn out his core supporters with a feverish, angry message, while simultaneously so damaging Mrs. Clinton — by dredging up her husband’s past sexual infidelities, which he accuses her of enabling — that Democratic turnout is depressed.
She has withdrawn from her own social media accounts, Ms. Trump said, rarely posting during the campaign. “I see the negativity, and it’s not healthy,” she said.
But when asked whether she has advised the same to her husband, a frequent Twitter user who often attacks others on his feed, she replied, “That’s his decision. He’s an adult.”
“I give him many advices, but sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t, and he will do what he wants to do at the end, and I will do what I want to do,” she said.
