This was published 7 years ago
Melania Trump says husband Donald was 'egged on' by Billy Bush
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's wife, Melania, defended her husband from accusations of misogyny and sexual assault on Monday and classified controversial lewd comments he made as "boy talk."
Two months after she was humiliated when she delivered a plagiarised speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Melania Trump emerged from near-total silence to defend her husband during the worst stretch of his candidacy, calling his behaviour toward women "inappropriate" but adding, "We are moving on."
Melania remained largely out of the spotlight as several women have accused the GOP nominee of sexual assault and harassment, which began after a lewd 2005 video surfaced in which Trump bragged about being able to grab women against their will because he is a celebrity.
During an interview with on CNN, Melania said that she felt her husband was "egged on" by TV personality Billy Bush, who was NBC's Access Hollywood host at the time, who was also in the video.
Melania Trump in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"I said to my husband that, you know, the language was unappropriate (sic). It's not acceptable. And I was surprised because that is not the man that I know," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And as you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on. It was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on. Because they were kind of - ah - boy talk. And he was led on, like egged on, from the host to say dirty and bad stuff."
Bush has since been suspended from NBC's Today, where he was a co-host.
Melania said that she was surprised because she had not heard Trump use language like that before.
"I've heard many different stuff, 'boys talk,' 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," she said. "But I was surprised, of course."
Melania Trump defended her husband in two interviews.Credit: AP
The campaign's decision to deploy Melania Trump as a character witness for her embattled husband came as top aides have struggled how to respond to reports that Donald Trump forced himself on several women and the emergence of the Access Hollywood tape. This past weekend, the campaign began discussing options for showcasing Melania publicly, leading to the two interviews she gave, one to Fox News and one to CNN.
In the interview with the Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt, from which excerpts were released on Monday afternoon, she expressed dismay with her husband's words.
Donald Trump, actress Arianne Zucker, and host Billy Bush in the 2005 tape.Credit: Washington Post
"Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate," Melania said. "And he apologised to me." She said she had accepted his apology. "We are moving on," she said.
In the Fox interview, she made clear she was standing by her husband, and attributed the comments to behaviour from an entertainer who was not a politician. "This is not the man that I know," she said.
"We could see, as I always said, as my husband said, as well, 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.'"
Melania Trump's emergence comes as the campaign has been bleeding the support of female voters, putting him further behind Hillary Clinton in national and swing-state polling. And it was unclear if her remarks would help change her husband's political fortunes.
Asked whether it is fair to bring up Bill Clinton's past, Melania said, "Well, if they bring up my past, why not?"
Sounding a note of retribution similar to her husband's, Melania said: "They're asking for it. They started."
The Washington Post, New York Times