Melania Trump came to the defense of her husband and denied sexual assault allegations against him that have dominated media attention over the past two weeks.
Melania appeared on CNN in an interview with Anderson Cooper Monday in her first on-camera interview since the tape of her husband and Billy Bush’s 2005 conversation was released October 7.
Melania Trump sits down with CNN television host Anderson Cooper during an exclusive interview. (Photo credit: CNN/Handout via REUTERS)
“The words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me. This does not represent the man that I know,” she said in a statement following the release of the tape. “I hope people will accept his apology, as I have.”
In the interview, Melania said she and her husband knew that “tapes would come out” during the election, due to Trump’s successful career as a business man and entertainer. For that reason, she wasn’t surprised when the 2005 recording became public, although she admitted she was surprised at his language.
“No, that’s why I was surprised, because I said like I don’t know that person that would talk that way, and that he would say that kind of stuff in private,” Trump said in the interview with Cooper.
“I heard many different stuff — boys talk,” she said. “The boys, the way they talk when they grow up and they want to sometimes show each other, ‘Oh, this and that’ and talking about the girls. But yes, I was surprised, of course.”
Melania fielded questions from Cooper about the several women who have since accused Trump of sexual assault. She addressed one of the accusations directly, coming from Natasha Stoynoff who did a story on the Trump’s on their one-year wedding anniversary.
Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence in the audience of the first presidential debate. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
“The writer she said my husband took her to the room and start kissing her,” Melania said to Cooper. “She wrote in the same story about me — that she saw me on 5th Avenue, and I said to her, ‘Natasha, how come we don’t see you anymore?’ I was never friends with her, I would not recognize her.”
When Cooper asked Trump if she thought the election is being rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton, she agreed with her husband. Trump also said she believes both the leak of Trump’s tax returns and the 2005 tape were organized to go public before the first two Presidential debates.
“Well I see it how the media is portraying,” she said. “I see how they report things, and what they want to say and what they don’t want to say,” she said. “They’re going — just for example, he makes a speech 45 minutes long, they take a sentence out, and they’re going on and on about that sentence, nothing else.”
Melania also claimed that she has been treated unfairly by the media. “For me, from the beginning, I never had one correct story — one honest story,” she said of the stories written about her. “I didn’t expect media would be so dishonest and so mean.”
Donald Trump gestures at his wife Melania after she concluded her remarks. (Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar)
Cooper finished the interview by asking Melania what she wants the American people to know about her husband.
“He wants to secure the borders, he wants to secure America, he wants to bring jobs back, he wants to bring economy back, and he’s very passionate about American people, because he knows he can do that,” she responded.
“He’s a worker, he’s a fighter, he is, he’s very passionate about it, and he will not give up, he will fight till the end, and he will fight for American people as he’s fighting now for himself.”