Donald Trump’s October Surprise arrived at Madison Square Garden Sunday night in the flesh: his wife, the notoriously aloof former first lady, Melania Trump, who appeared quite intent on making a return to the White House after months of avoiding the campaign trail.
“It is you who are the heartbeat of this great metropolis. It is you who are the pulse of this America,” she told MAGA rally-goers, who had begun gathering inside MSG at Noon on Sunday. “Yet New York City is unforgiving. In fact our lives are complicated even during the best of times.”
The former and seemingly aspiring future first lady could be her husband’s secret weapon to winning another term in the Oval Office, thanks to revelations in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Melania.
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“New York City and America needs their magic back,” Melania proclaimed to cheering fans inside the packed 20,000-seat arena, after noting that Manhattan has “produced America’s most fearless leaders, whose mark changed the course of the world.”
In her book published this month, she revealed she’s as much of an election denier as her husband and that her son, Barron Trump—a freshman at New York University—is “not autistic.”
More importantly, she revealed she believes “it is imperative” that women have the right to choose whether to have an abortion—a winning issue for Democrats in the wake of the Supreme Court‘s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and one that Kamala Harris sees as make-or-break in her presidential campaign’s last gasp before Election Day on Nov. 5.
The 54-year-old Yugoslavian-born former model’s signature accent has remained unchanged since her husband’s one-term administration. Melania Trump had shied away from her husband’s campaign events until Sunday night’s appearance in New York.
In her brief appearance before she introduced her husband to speak at the rally he has been touting for weeks, she mentioned rising crime and economic instability. At one point, someone in the crowd shouted their love to Melania.
“Love you, too,” the improbable bestselling author replied.
It was, as one sympathetic conservative journalist posted on social media, the second coming of the euphoria that Republicans experienced at their national party’s convention in Milwaukee last July, just two days after the former president’s ear was injured in his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“And now, please,” she said, pausing amid raucous applause and cheers, “welcome our next commander in chief, my husband, President Donald J. Trump.”
She embraced and kissed her 78-year-old husband on each check as he took the stage before he whispered something into her ear.
Of course, supporters of Kamala Harris, who is locked in a dead heat with Trump just eight days before Election Day, had their own take on the Trumps’ interaction on the stage at historic Madison Square Garden—calling it “awkward” and questioning the strength of the pair’s relationship.
