Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:22 pm
Taking a page from her husband’s playbook, Melania Trump blamed what she believes is a biased media for the release of a 2005 videotape in which her husband brags about sexually assaulting women.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Mrs. Trump said she was “not surprised” by the tape surfacing and blamed it on the desire of the media and Hillary Clinton to “damage the campaign” of her husband.
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Melania Trump blames left wing media for the release of the 2005 tape: “I was not surprised that the tape came out” https://t.co/biV9HbpHfB
— CNN (@CNN) October 18, 2016
Melania Trump said:
I was not surprised that the tape came out …. because, as I said, it’s many people from the opposite side, that they want to damage the campaign. Why now? Why after so many years, why three weeks before the election? … It was the media. It was NBC. It was ‘Access Hollywood.’ It was left-wing media, and you could see that. The way it comes out, everything was organized … It was hour after hour bashing him, because they want to influence the American people how to vote.
She even claimed that the Clinton campaign and the media are “working together” to take down her husband’s candidacy.
Not only did Melania Trump stick to her husband’s blame-the-press script, but she also happily used his campaign’s ridiculous talking point that Trump’s 2005 comments were simply “locker room talk.”
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Melania Trump on “locker room talk”: “I know how some men talk and that’s how I saw it, yes” https://t.co/IDm7N1ioh5 https://t.co/0UMZBrGmw5
— CNN (@CNN) October 18, 2016
Despite Trump being 59 at the time of the ‘Access Hollywood’ recording, Mrs. Trump equated the conversation between her husband and Billy Bush as “two teenage boys” that need to “behave better.”
She said:
It’s kind of two teenage boys – actually they should behave better, right? Sometimes I said I have two boys at home. I have my young son and I have my husband … but I know how some men talk and that’s how I saw it, yes.
Taking another page from her husband’s desperate campaign’s playbook, Melania Trump went directly after the growing number of women who have been accusing Donald Trump of sexually assaulting them over the years, saying the women “don’t have any facts.”
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Melania Trump on the women accusing Donald Trump of assault: “They don’t have any facts” https://t.co/05vzqpvqVJ https://t.co/v6DopONr0V
— CNN (@CNN) October 18, 2016
Mrs. Trump said:
I believe my husband. This was all organized from the opposition … With the details that they got, did they ever check the background of these women? They don’t have any facts.
Melania Trump certainly has the right to defend her husband and stand by him. But her defense strategy is likely to prolong the story – not put it behind them.
For a campaign hemorrhaging support with just three weeks until Election Day, that’s the last thing they need.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
