Melania Trump, maybe America's most private first lady ever, is a woman
whose quiet presence on Pennsylvania Avenue is almost the polar opposite
of the image projected by her husband.
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Her reserved voice contrasts with the president, who often speaks unfiltered whenever he wants.
But when she sat down with ABC News for a rare interview during her recent trip through Africa,
she spoke freely, describing times when she has disagreed with her
husband as well as what she likes about her role — which she repeatedly
emphasized she does, indeed, like.
“I love Washington. I love to live there. And I made the White House
home — for our son and my husband — and we love to live in the White
House,” Trump told ABC's Chief National Affairs Correspondent Tom
Llamas.
“We are very honored to serve our great nation,” she added.
With a scenic wildlife preserve in Kenya as the backdrop, Llamas asked
Melania Trump if traveling was one of the best parts of being first
lady. Yes, she said, it was.
“But it's also when I travel across the world and across the country,
meeting people, and hearing and helping them as much as I can, and
hearing what is important to them,” she added.
Nevermind that her husband has taken a vastly different approach when it
comes to his views on a global community. Last month, he told the U.N.
General Assembly, “We reject the ideology of globalism and embrace the
doctrine of patriotism.” And earlier this year, President Trump sparked backlash
at home and abroad after reportedly calling certain African nations
“s---hole countries” during a meeting with senators in the White House.
The president later denied using that language.
Long before traveling the world as first lady of the United States,
Melania Trump spent her youth in a small central European town before
navigating the ranks of the fashion world and eventually landing in the
country she now calls home.
Born Melania Knauss in Slovenia in 1970, she worked as a fashion model
in Italy and France before moving to New York in 1996. Shortly
thereafter, she met a real estate developer with big buildings and an
ego to match.
During an interview with Barbara Walters in 2015, the first lady described how the two met.
“Well, he was very charming and we had the great sparkle. He came with a
date. So he asked me for the number and I said, ‘I will not give you my
number. So if you give me your numbers, I will call you.’ So I see what
kind of numbers he will give me. Because I don't want to be one of the
ladies. And he was known as kind of a lady's man.”
The mogul and the model would marry in 2005.
“We have a great chemistry and to be with a man like my husband is you
need to know who you are,” Melania Trump told Walters during the
campaign in a 2015 interview. “You need to have a very independent life
and supporting him, you need to be very smart and quick, and be there
for him when he needs you.”
Now, 16 months into living in the White House, she says there have been challenges.
Trump says she wants to make the most of these White House years. And
yet, she says not everyone wants to help. The first lady lamented that
organizations have spurned her efforts to collaborate, accusing them of
allowing her husband’s politics to get in the way of her charitable
endeavors.
“It's sad to see that organizations and foundations that I want to
partner with choose not to because of the administration,” the first
lady said. “And I feel they’re choosing the politics over helping
others.”
Who exactly said no? Trump wouldn’t specify, saying, “I would not talk
about it. They know who they are. I don’t want… I don’t want to put them
out in front of the world, but they know who they are.”
There are also those repeated accusations of sexual misconduct and infidelity leveled against her husband.
One incident, in particular, garnered an apology from her famously stubborn husband – the release of the Access Hollywood tape during the run-up to the 2016 election, in which Trump is heard making vulgar comments about women.
“During the Access Hollywood incident during the campaign, your husband
apologized to you. Has your husband apologized to you since you've been
in the White House?” Llamas asked the first lady.
“Yeah, he apologized,” she said, before declining to divulge further details.
Six days after her interview with Llamas, the first lady’s staff
clarified her comments, telling ABC News, “The president often
apologizes to Mrs. Trump for all the media nonsense and scrutiny she has
been under since entering the White House.”
Asked if her husband’s alleged affairs — which the White House has
denied — have put a strain on their marriage, she said that people and
the media like to speculate and circulate gossip.
“I'm a mother and a first lady, and I have much more important things to
think about and to do,” she told ABC News. “It is not a concern and
focus of mine.”
Speaking to ABC News in Africa, she addressed the #MeToo movement, calling on sexual assault accusers to present “really hard evidence” if they decide to go public with allegations.
“I support the women – they need to be heard. We need to support them.
And also men, not just women,” Trump said. “You cannot just say to
somebody… ‘I was sexually assaulted’ or ‘You did that to me.’ Because
sometimes the media goes too far and the way they portray some stories,
it’s not correct. It’s not right.”
Still, the first lady presses on. She spoke of her son, Barron, who is
now 12 and whom she keeps shielded from the spotlight. After the
inauguration, she stayed with him in New York until he finished the
school year. She said she doesn’t always go to his sports practices and
games because it would “bring the attention.” “I don't go much,” she
said. “He likes to be one of the boys when they play. … It's his life
too, and I respect that.”
During her time in Africa, Trump sought to highlight her major policy
initiative, “Be Best,” which raises awareness about the effects of online bullying on children,
among other things. The first lady explained how her experience being
bullied led in part to her "Be Best" initiative, going so far as to
suggest she is one of the most bullied people in the world.
"I could say that I'm the most bullied person in the world," Trump said.
Pressed by Llamas on that assertion, she responded, "One of them, if
you really see what people are saying about me."
Both online and on TV, people often focus on what Trump wears. Sometimes
it’s because of appearances at glamorous diplomatic or ceremonial
events in the White House or abroad.
But then, there was the jacket.
Boarding a plane to Texas to meet with children of families separated at
the border, Trump was spotted donning a green jacket with the words, “I
really don’t care, do you?” emblazoned on the back. Her choice of
wardrobe caused backlash before her flight landed just hours later, with
her concern for those children of separated families immediately being
called into question.
After her team initially denied any subtext in the jacket’s words, the
first lady told Llamas that wearing that jacket was, in fact, a
deliberate choice, meant “for the people and for the left-wing media who
are criticizing me. I want to show them that I don't care. You could
criticize whatever you want to say, but it will not stop me to do what I
feel is right.”
“It was kind of a message, yes. I would prefer that they would focus on
what I do and on my initiatives than what I wear,” she said.
Asked about suggestions that the jacket’s message was directed at the children of separated families.
“It's obvious I didn't wear the jacket for the children,” she said. “I
wore the jacket to go on the plane and off the plane. … After the visit,
I put it back on because I see how [the] media got obsessed about it.”
Aside from the media scrutiny, being in the White House presents additional challenges.
In spite of her appreciation for the nation’s capital, she doesn’t trust
everyone who works for her husband there. Trump told ABC News some of
the people in the president’s administration whom she didn’t trust have
left, while others still work there.
"It's harder to govern," the first lady said, adding that she tells her
husband when she distrusts someone working for him. "You always need to
watch your back."
Despite all this, Trump said she hasn’t changed since uprooting her life in New York City and moving to the nation’s capital.
“I'm staying true to myself. I want to live [a] meaningful life, and
that's the most important to me. I know what my priorities are, and I'm
focused on that,” she said.
Trump says she has the same close group of friends she had before coming
to Washington. “I always prefer quality over quantity,” she said. Asked
if it’s hard to make friends in Washington, the first lady said,
“Sometimes; you need to be careful.”
“You know, our first first lady, Martha Washington, famously said the
role of first lady can sometimes feel like a state prisoner. Can you
relate to that?” asked Llamas.
“I don't feel like a prisoner. No. I [am] enjoying it, and this will not
last forever. And it's [a] very special time,” she said.
Some of the biggest misconceptions about her, she said, have been what
she called the “speculations” — that she’s “out of touch,” or doesn’t
live in the White House, or rumors that spread after she spent time in
the hospital for a benign kidney condition, as her spokeswoman reported.
"Speculation, speculations,” Trump said, “and my office put out the
statement, a factual statement, and people still didn't believe it.”
Bodies of 11 infants found in ceiling of closed funeral home
In a disturbing discovery, the bodies of 11 deceased infants were found
in the ceiling of a shuttered funeral home in Detroit on Friday.
The bodies were found in bags, most in a cardboard box and others stuffed in a small coffin, police said.
The discovery was made after the Michigan Department of Licensing and
Regulatory Affairs (LARA), which licenses funeral homes, was sent an
anonymous letter Friday afternoon, which described exactly where the
remains could be found.
"It's just the callousness of the operators, the owners, the employees
of the funeral home [that stands out]," Detroit Police Department Lt.
Brian Bowser said at a press conference Friday night. "The inspectors
from LARA located the boxes, or the one box and the casket, and they
subsequently called 911. The police responded, they removed the box and
the casket from the false ceiling, or the lowered ceiling, and they
opened them up and obviously they discovered the remains."
"They were actually in a cardboard box, nine of the 11 -- they're very
small remains," Bowser continued. "They were in a cardboard box stuffed
away from a stairwell."
Bowser said they have names of some of the deceased infants and the medical examiner will conduct an investigation.
The Cantrell Funeral Home was shut down in April due to a number of disturbing violations, according to Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ.
Violations included dirty floors, peeling paint, mold, improper storage
of embalmed bodies, with one in "advanced stage of decomposition," and
fraud, deceit, or dishonesty, incompetence, and gross negligence in the
practice of mortuary science." LARA called the violations "deplorable"
at the time.
The Detroit Police Department will continue to investigate the discovery
Friday and had cadaver dogs searching the property, Bowser said.
"Obviously we have to find out what happened, and why it happened," he said.
LARA released a statement to WXYZ explaining the discovery and the April violations.
"Based on a new complaint, LARA investigators today searched Cantrell
Funeral Home and found the decomposing bodies of 11 infants," the
statement said. "We then immediately contacted local authorities. In
April, LARA suspended the mortuary licenses of both the home and its
manager Jameca LaJoyce Boone for many violations including the improper
storage of decomposing bodies of adult and infants. That suspension
order remains in effect as does our investigation. We will use the
evidence gathered today to add to our open investigation and will
continue to work with local law enforcement as this case proceeds."
The property has been sold and the new owners plan to turn it into a community center, according to WXYZ.
Trump administration steps in to kill police-reform plan
The Trump administration informed a federal judge in Chicago on Friday
that it's seeking to scuttle a plan negotiated between the nation's
third-largest city and the state of Illinois that envisions far-reaching
reforms of Chicago's 12,000-officer police force under close federal
court supervision.
In a statement announcing the intervention, Attorney General Jeff Sessions
blasted the roughly 200-page plan, also known as a consent decree,
because of the court oversite. And he offered a full-throated defense of
Chicago police, saying they must take the lead in stemming city
violence.
"There is a misperception that police are the problem and that their
failures, their lack of training, and their abuses create crime,"
Sessions said. "But the truth is the police are the solution to crime,
and criminals are the problem."
An 11-page Justice Department statement of interest — filed with
Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., who must grant the proposal final approval —
says the reform plan, as it is, would deprive police of flexibility to
do their jobs right. And it criticizes criteria in the plan meant to
assess police compliance as vague.
It asks Dow "to allow state and local officials — and Chicago's brave
front-line police officers — to engage in flexible and localized efforts
to advance the goal of safe, effective, and constitutional policing in
Chicago."
The filing and Sessions' comments came a week after jurors convicted
white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder for
shooting black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014 as he
walked away from police with a knife.
A video of the shooting, released about a year later, sparked outage
nationwide and led to an Obama administration investigation of Chicago
police, which was followed months later by a damning report that found
widespread police abuses.
The Department of Justice Friday simultaneously announced the creation
of a "Gun Crimes Prosecution Team" at Chicago's U.S. attorney's office
focused on gun crimes. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives will assign five violent-crime coordinators to work with
federal prosecutors.
Responding to the announcements, a spokesman for Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emanuel, Matt McGrath, said the city appreciated the additional
resources, "but we don't appreciate efforts ... to impede our public
safety reforms or inhibit our efforts to rebuild the bonds of trust
between officers and residents."
Illinois Attorney Lisa Madigan — without objection from Emanuel — sued
the city last year to ensure any police reforms would be overseen by a
judge. That killed a draft plan negotiated with Trump's administration
that didn't envision a court role in reforming the department and led to
the ultimately successful talks to create the current plan.
The reform plan now on the table foresees far stricter rules on the use
of force by officers. One provision requires officers to file paperwork
each time they point their weapons, even if they don't fire.
Sessions again echoed President Donald Trump, who told officers at a
convention in Orlando on Monday that a three-year-old agreement between
Chicago and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to curb
stop-and-frisk procedures by police prevented officers from doing their
jobs.
"When police are restrained from using lawfully established policies ...
when arrests went down, and when their work and character were
disrespected, crime surged," Sessions said. "There must never be
another consent decree that continues the folly of the ACLU settlement."
Chicago officials and the ACLU have said those and similar claims by
Trump administration officials are exaggerated, get the data on crime in
Chicago wrong and misstate the underlying causes of crime.
Karen Sheley, the director of the police practices project at the ACLU
of Illinois, said the move Friday by the Trump administration to sink a
plan in the works for over a year was "a last-minute political play at
the expense of real people in our city."
"The Trump Administration and Sessions' Department of Justice have never
attempted to learn about the problems in Chicago or what reform is
necessary," Sheley said in a Friday statement.
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