The media assure that the presidential couple have separate rooms in the White House. But she says the president's affairs are just "gossip."
Few marriages are the subject of more speculation than that of US President Donald Trump and Melania, but the first lady has now decided to go on the offensive with an interview with ABC channel in which she responds to her husband's alleged infidelities and whether she is still he wants it.
The radio station reporter Tom Llamas accompanied the former model of Slovenian origin during her solo tour of several African countries and had the opportunity to speak with her in depth. According to Llamas, there were no prohibited questions from the first lady, born Melanija Knavs, who is 24 years her husband's junior.
Regarding the alleged infidelities of Donald Trump, 72 years old (and which he denies), Melania's diplomatic response was that she has other things to think about than those speculations. "I am a mother and a first lady, and I have more important things to do," she said. But she did not clearly deny that infidelities existed.
"You have said that you have a good marriage. Do you love your husband?" the reporter asks. "Yes, we are doing well," the first lady briefly answers.
The media speculate and that is nothing more than "gossip". "It's not always true," she says. Of course speculation isn't always pretty, she concedes, but she's blunt: "I know what's right and what's not and what's true and what's not."
The marriage, Trump's third, is really the subject of many questions. The images in which the president is seen trying to take Melania Trump by the hand and how she seems to do everything possible to deny it went around the world. Also sparking countless rumors was the image of the inauguration in January 2017, when Trump smiles at her and she returns the gesture broadly, but when he turns away her face sinks in disgust. The media claim that Donald and Melania Trump have separate rooms in the White House.
To scare away the rumors, Melania Trump now affirms that she "loves" living in Washington in the White House and that if her husband runs for re-election in 2020, as is speculated, she will support him. "I think my husband does an incredible job for this nation," she says.
Being first lady is a glamorous job if you think of Melania's Trump predecessor, Michelle Obama. But the current president's wife hardly appeared in public at the beginning of his term and there were even times when she even seemed to have disappeared from the map. Since then she has recovered ground and sometimes places the accent on issues that seem to contradict her husband, although she of course denies it.
In May she created the "Be Best" initiative, which deals with children and especially bullying on social networks, "cyber-bullying". Some analysts believe that the biggest "cyberbully" of our times is Trump, with Twitter as his main weapon.
Melania Trump did openly confront her husband regarding the policy of "zero tolerance" with illegal immigration, which involved the separation of parents and children at the border with Mexico and the confinement of minors alone in camps. The first lady traveled there during the summer (boreal) to get first-hand information.
"It broke my heart. And I reacted with my own voice," says Melania Trump in the interview. Llamas reminds her that it was something caused by her husband's politics. "Yes, and so I let him know," she replies. "I told him that was not acceptable." Trump then stopped separating families, an indication that perhaps Melania Trump has more influence than is believed.
Trump divides the United States between those who support him, who adore him for his unconventional style of government, and those who hate him for precisely that. To some extent this same reaction has carried over to Melania, notes ABC correspondent Terry Moran: she is a "magnificent first lady" to Trump supporters and critics who is "either the Beauty who lives with the Beast, or the princess trapped in the castle by the dragon".
