Melania Trump made a rare appearance with her husband on Tuesday and gave a brief, vague response when asked if she will start to join the former president at campaign events: “Stay tuned.”
The former first lady, who was present during Donald Trump’s campaign launch in November 2022 but who has avoided his recent rallies and victory speeches, hasn’t attended any of Trump’s civil or criminal court proceedings either.
When asked about his wife last month on Fox News, Trump had said she would appear at campaign events “quite a bit,” while acknowledging she is a “private person.”
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“She’s going to be out a lot—not because she likes doing it, but she likes the results,” he said.
In a matter of weeks, Trump is expected to go on trial in New York over several dozen felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments before the 2016 election to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair with him. Daniels has claimed that the alleged affair, which Trump has denied, occurred just a few months after Melania had given birth to their son, Barron.
A judge on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s request to prohibit testimony from Daniels, as well as from his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, whom Trump reimbursed for the payments, according to prosecutors.
After voting in Florida’s Republican primary Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Trump took the majority of reporters’ questions, and used the occasion to lash out at his political opponents and complain about his courtroom losses.
Peter Navarro, the first former Trump White House aide imprisoned over the Jan. 6 insurrection, was treated “very unfairly,” he said.
“He’s a good man. He was treated very unfairly—a great patriot, great negotiator for our country,” Trump said. “The Biden administration treated him very, very badly. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is.”
As for Mike Pence declining to endorse him, Trump claimed he “couldn’t care less.”
“We need strong people in this country. We don’t need weak people,” Trump said, similar to what he reportedly told Pence while trying to get him to thwart the Electoral College certification on Jan. 6.
And regarding the fast-approaching deadline to secure a cash bond to appeal his nearly half-billion dollar civil bank fraud judgment, Trump insisted he has “a lot of cash,” and that the verdict was political.
“I built a great company, one of the greatest companies anywhere in the country, especially when it comes to real estate. I have some of the greatest assets in the world,” Trump claimed, echoing complaints he made on Truth Social on Monday. “We have a lot of cash and we have a great company, but they want to take it away, or at least take the cash element away.”
According to court documents filed Monday, Trump has struck out with about 30 companies who could help him secure the bond but rarely accept real estate as collateral. The New York attorney general’s office could begin seizing Trump’s properties and freezing his bank accounts early next week.
The former president also stood by his comments about Democrats and Israel from Monday, in which he again pushed an antisemitic trope.
“I think that the Democrats have been very, very opposed to Jewish people, that’s true, and to Israel,” he said. “All you have to do is look at Sen. [Chuck] Schumer. What he did with Israel is a disgrace, and I think Israel will probably not forget it very soon, it’s a very sad situation.”
