For the past two years, Melania Trump hasn’t given any interviews and has skipped nearly all of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign events. But now the former First Lady has reemerged to promote her memoir, Melania, which comes out on Tuesday. Though she claimed she wrote the book because she felt compelled to reveal her “truth,” the book isn’t expected to be a tell-all. So far, the book-promotion tour has consisted of kooky, conspiracy-theory-laden social-media videos and three Fox News interviews. The latest was an October 6 appearance on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures. Host Maria Bartiromo mostly fawned over the former president and asked softball questions, but the interview did contain a few interesting revelations from Melania. Here’s what we learned.
She’s suspicious of the “top level” of the Secret Service.
In a previous interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Melania dodged when asked if she has issues with the Secret Service after it let would-be assassins get disturbingly close to Donald Trump twice in recent months. Melania was more forthcoming when Bartiromo asked, “Do you trust the Secret Service?”
“I have a great team on my detail around me, and my husband as well,” Melania said. “I think there are some [pause] some holes, something that’s going on on the top level, or it was when that shooting happened. I know some people change the positions. But let’s hope that will never happen again.”
Melania could have been referring to the incompetence of Secret Service leadership, which seems like a very reasonable concern. But Bartiromo ran with the “deep-state anti-Trump agenda” angle. “You know, you talk about the top level,” the anchor said. “You can talk about the top level of all of these agencies. Right? The FBI, the CIA. I mean, the top level appeared to be against President Trump and yourself from day one. Do you trust any of the agencies?”
Melania, who vaguely raised a Trump assassination conspiracy theory in her book-promo videos, seemed open to this line of thinking. “Well, it’s hard to say that you trust, right? Who you really trust. You want to. But it’s always a question mark,” she responded.
First Lady @MELANIATRUMP on the state of the Secret Service: "I think there's some holes, something that's going on in the top level... Let's hope that will never happen again." pic.twitter.com/ubBw8HKWOb
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 6, 2024
She’s agnostic on the Trump revenge tour.
Donald Trump has been quite clear that getting revenge on all of his enemies — from Joe Biden to mainstream-media outlets — will be one of his second-term goals. Bartiromo didn’t hide her excitement about Trump’s plans for retribution.
“You know, it’s quite incredible to me that we are going on almost ten years of these kinds of attacks against you and your husband, the president,” she said. “Do you want President Trump to hold people accountable, should he return to office?”
While Melania said multiple times that she wants to see her husband reelected, she seemed less passionate about the vengeance aspect.
She answered, “Well, that would be his decision. They have much more knowledge. What is going on behind the scene. So I don’t know what somebody did, didn’t do. But I think everybody should follow the law.”
She sees herself as a victim of cancel culture.
In a recent book-promo video, Melania said that she has “experienced the profound impact of cancel culture,” and “it’s disheartening to see how deeply lives can be affected, especially when it impacts communities like foster-care children.”
It was not immediately clear what “cancel culture” had to do with kids in foster care. Melania added some context in her interview with Bartiromo, claiming a bank, “the university,” and a “very prominent email-distribution service provider” stopped doing business with her when she was First Lady, and this impacted her efforts to raise money for children in foster care:
[It] was all agreed that, they will accept my donations for the foster students and it’s because of the board of directors. They called back. They found out that it was me. They didn’t. They said, We cannot go on.
And it’s very, very sad because who suffered? They were children from foster community. They didn’t have a scholarship that somebody will provide for them. They didn’t want to do business with me because of political affiliation, my political, political beliefs. And you know that that was one one of them, one of the canceling project.”
It’s unclear what specific institutions Melania was referring to, but presumably, she provides more detail in the book.
First Lady Melania Trump speaks on being “cancelled.” Says she was de-banked, universities refused her donations to help foster students.
— FLOTUS Report (@MELANIAJTRUMP) October 6, 2024
“It’s very sad, because who suffered? They were children from foster communities.” pic.twitter.com/ajCKfagFtt
She wants to talk about being pro-choice, but not the political implications.
It appears that the biggest revelation in Melania is that the former First Lady considers herself a supporter of abortion rights, though her husband paved the way for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. This raises some obvious questions, which Melania seems largely uninterested in answering.
She told Bartiromo that her husband has always known that she is pro-choice:
He knew my position and my beliefs since the day we met. And I believe in individual freedom. I want to decide what I want to do with my body. I think, uh, I don’t want government in my personal business. I think it’s very important, and as I said in the book, and it’s very well explained in the chapter, what does really “my body, my choice” mean? Because timing really matters, and the restrictions. So I encourage people to read it. Because we live in the world that everybody should have individual freedom.
But the former First Lady did not shed much light on why she’s revealing this now. She suggested she just wanted us to know the real Melania, and her book happens to be coming out a month before a presidential election:
Well, [the pro-choice revelation] was not written in the last week or the last month. That book was written months before. And it was in print months before. So that was my belief and it is my belief and I wanted to put it in the book because I want to be authentic. I want people to read the book because they could find out a lot of things that were never discussed.
Nor did she explain how she squares her pro-choice stance with Republican efforts to deny them to women across the country. When asked how she thinks Donald Trump and the GOP have handled the issue, she focused on her husband “letting” her have her own stance on abortion:
He knew my beliefs, as I said, so he knew it would be in the book. He let me be who I am and he let me believe what I believe. He let me be my own person and he respects that, and I respect that as I let him be his own person. He has different beliefs and he will do what he believes. He will be, um, if he will be elected official.
And when asked if she’s “worried about people saying I can’t vote for this ticket because of this issue,” Melania answered, “I don’t worry. Everybody needs to decide what they want to do.”
So was Melania ever worried that she couldn’t vote for the GOP ticket because of the abortion issue? Bartiromo didn’t ask, and presumably the book won’t tell us.
Former first lady Melania Trump, in an interview with Fox News, reiterated her stance on abortion saying she believed in individual freedom and that she didn't want government to interfere with her personal choices. She said her husband, Donald Trump, was aware of her position on… pic.twitter.com/lzoz8EWLk6
— Forbes India (@ForbesIndia) October 7, 2024
Here’s the full interview:
