NEW YORK—Melania Trump on Monday dismissed her husband’s sexually aggressive language as “boy talk,” insisting his remarks do not reflect “the man I know,” and said she does not believe that he has assaulted any women.
Trump’s wife, in a series of media interviews, said she has accepted her husband’s apology and the couple is “moving on.” The comments come more than a week after the release of a 2005 video in which Trump brags about kissing women and grabbing their genitals without their permission.
She said something similar in a statement released by the campaign after the video’s release. She has also demanded retractions from a People Magazine writer who profiled the couple in 2005 and last week accused Donald Trump of an assault at the couple’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, while Melania was out of the room. And she repeated her husband’s assertion, which he makes without supporting evidence, that the media and Clinton campaign are working in tandem to sink the Republican nominee’s campaign.
Melania Trump has never filled the role of the traditional political spouse, only making rare appearances on the campaign trail. Her speech at July’s national convention was initially praised until it was discovered that passages of it were lifted from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention address.
Trump, who attended each of the first two presidential debates, was also lampooned on this week’s Saturday Night Live. The long-running sketch show ran a video in which actresses playing Melania Trump, her two step-daughters and two of the candidate’s most visible female allies did a version of Beyonce’s feminist manifesto “Lemonade” in an act of rebellion against the candidate.
The video ends with the Cecily Strong, the comedian playing Melania Trump, suggesting she wrote the song herself.
