When Melania Trump was caught plagiarizing passages from Michelle Obama at this summer’s Republican National Convention, no one was more successful at satirizing the moment than Broadway star Laura Benanti, who stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to deliver her flawless impression of Donald Trump’s third wife.
Now, the rarely seen and even more rarely heard Melania Trump is back in the news, thanks to a pair of interviews she gave this week in which she defended her husband amidst accusations of sexual assault from up to nine different women. In Melania’s view, when the 59-year-old Trump boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy,” he was simply engaging in “boy talk.”
After the real Melania gave interviews to Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Benanti’s Melania appeared once more “via satellite” with Colbert.
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This time, she looked off to the side, as the assured the host they were “completely alone,” with no one else in the room “coaching” her through the interview. When he asked if she has “forgiven” her husband for his transgressions, her first instinct was the shake her head before realizing she was supposed to say “yes.”
“Yes, apparently, because he explained it was ‘locker room talk,’” she continued. “I did not know this, but when American men gather to sport, they always brag of grabbing women by the Billy Bush.” When she repeated the “boy talk” line she gave Cooper, Colbert pointed out that her husband is not a “boy” but rather a 70-year-old man.
“Boys, men, it’s the same,” Melania said. “No matter how nice they seem, secretly they’re all foul-mouthed, Billy Bush-grabbing pigs. I’m talking about your husband, your brother, the pope, Luke Skywalker, all of them.”
“They’re all animals,” she said, laughing. “If only a woman could be president.”
