First Lady Melania Trump made an increasingly rare appearance on television on Wednesday night, even as her husband grapples with ongoing revelations about the Russia probe and news of his implication in multiple campaign finance felonies. It was no wonder for most that Melania would appear on the Trump-friendly Fox News network, and smaller surprise still that she would sit down with the fawning Sean Hannity for his namesake program, which ranks number one among elderly viewers and just behind Rachel Maddow overall.
Mrs. Trump was coming off a visit she made to the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush, who makes her home port in Norfolk, Virginia, where she had a holiday visit with the troops. It didn’t take long, however, before she apparently saw them as “thanking her for her service,” which she told Hannity was what she was hearing from them. She said she, of course, thanked them for their service, which seems far more appropriate, given that she hasn’t actually done anything for them.
At one point in the interview, Hannity asked her whether she would like to stay in the White House for a second term, and her answer was anything but in the affirmative:
I think my husband, he’s doing an incredible job, the country does best ever. So yes, I think that that the country, country need to do well.”
But it was a little over halfway through the interview when Hannity drew her into the discussion of fake news. In a clearly scripted segment, the host asked her what the hardest part of being First Lady has been for her, and she launched into messaging that sounded almost exactly like the President:
I would say the opportunists who are using my name or my family name to advance themselves, from comedians to journalists to performers, book writers…It doesn’t hurt, the problem is, they writing the history, and it’s not correct.”
Hannity helpfully reminded her that there has been speculation about her marriage, and she responded:
They like to focus on the gossip, and I would like to that they focus on the substance and what we do, not just about nonsense.”
Unfortunately for Melania, when Hannity went on to the next portion of the interview, much of what is “speculated” about her was proven correct — she rarely watches the news, sometimes “taping” Hannity’s program, and sometimes watching it if she has the time. Although she insists she knows what’s going on, even her husband doesn’t actually know what’s going on, and he watches news voraciously.
Asked if she ever weighed in on Trump’s decisions, her answer was typically noncommittal:
I give my husband advice and my honest opinion, and sometimes he listens and sometimes he doesn’t.”
I guess that makes her almost the same as America’s intelligence agencies, except he probably listens to Melania more often.
Watch our clip here:
Featured image via screen capture.
