‘I saw unpleasant stuff’: Melania Trump breaks two-year silence

In her first TV appearance in years, Melania Trump opened up on assassination attempts, Joe Biden, and things ‘nobody wants to see’.

In her first televised interview in more than two years, Melania Trump revealed a candid look inside her family’s experience of two assassination attempts, FBI raids, toxic demonisation, and Joe Biden’s stunning withdrawal from the election.

The former first lady, 54, made the rare appearance on Fox & Friends after “miracles” saved her husband, Donald Trump from the crosshairs of two gunmen.

“When you see him on the floor and you don’t know, you don’t know what really happened,” she said of the first attempt on Mr Trump’s life.

She watched as he rose to his feet, yelling “Fight, fight, fight”. She frantically tried to call the former president’s phone. Then the Secret Service, at first not available, eventually answered and confirmed he survived and was en route to hospital. Son, Barron Trump, came running in from playing sports outside. It was a “very difficult” conversation.

“Both of the events, they were really miracles if you think about it,” she said.

Melania Trump interview

The first gunman, Thomas Crooks, was killed while the alleged second gunman, Ryan Routh, 58, was formally charged with attempted assassination this week.

It comes as a preliminary report into the first assassination revealed glaring Secret Service failures, and classified US intelligence briefings warned of more “real and specific” plots to kill Mr Trump, orchestrated by Iran.

Mrs Trump unloaded on the Democratic Party and the American media for creating the environment for the assassination attempts, saying what was happening was “not normal” and that the country needed to unite.

“It is really shocking that all this violence goes against my husband. Especially that we hear the leaders from the opposition party and the mainstream media branding him as a threat to democracy,” she said.

“Calling him vile names. They only fuel a toxic atmosphere and giving power to all of these people that want to do harm to him. This needs to stop. This needs to stop.”

Moment Donald Trump is shot

Mrs Trump said she and her husband, a “caring” “family man” who just wants the best for the country he loves, had been targeted by “misinformation and falsehoods”.

The interview and her forthcoming memoir “Melania”, releasing in October, are her attempts to tell her story and “put the record straight”.

Speaking on the FBI raid on the family’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022, Mrs Trump said “invasive” agents “rummaged” through her personal items and searched the room of Barron.

“It made me angry, yes, invasion of privacy. And the way it was done, I was really surprised,” she said, adding her how shocked she was at the mess left behind.

“I saw unpleasant stuff, that nobody wants to see it. You get angry because nobody should be putting up with that kind of stuff. Some person, I don’t even know who, or how many people, they went through my stuff.”

Donald Trump raises his fist post-shooting

Mrs Trump has bucked the trend of presidential candidate wives playing an active role in election campaigning.

The reclusive, Slovenian-born ex-model has stayed largely away from Mr Trump’s bombastic rallies and was nowhere to be seen during his trial arising from hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Even after the first assassination attempt, Mrs Trump released a letter but did not deliver a speech during a brief appearance at the Republican National Convention just days later.

Asked about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the US election after the devastating debate against Mr Trump, she said the record of the Biden-Harris administration “speaks for itself”.

“The country is suffering,” she said, adding that people could compare the past four years to the four years under Mr Trump.

“American people need to decide what they really want, maybe some strong tweets but everything else great for this country. So it’s all in the Americans’ people’s hands on November 5th.”

Originally published as ‘I saw unpleasant stuff’: Melania Trump breaks two-year silence