Your support helps us to tell the story
Melania Trump has finally revealed where she stands on Donald Trump’s denial of the 2020 election.
In her new memoir Melania, out on Tuesday, the former first lady echoes her husband’s refusal to accept the result and parrots his baseless claims that his “enemies aligned” to prevent his reelection “by any means necessary.”
She adds that she is “not the only person who questions the results.”
“The media, Big Tech, and the deep state were all determined to prevent Donald’s reelection, by any means necessary,” Melania writes.
“With all these enemies aligned, I worried the election would be unfair.”
Melania recalls how she watched election night unfold from her room in the White House with son Barron as Trump came in and out of the room.
When Fox News famously called Arizona for President Joe Biden, Melania reveals she was in disbelief and more convinced than ever that the 2020 race was “not a normal election.”
“At 11.30pm, Fox News projected that Arizona would flip to Biden. I couldn’t believe it,” she writes.
“How could they call it so early before all the votes were counted? It was another sign that this was not a normal election.”
Her suspicions grew when she learned that “due to the way different states counted mail-in ballots and the various mail-in deadlines, the results would not be clear for several days,” Melania says.
“At this point, everything was called into question for me.”
Melania’s description of how the votes were counted and the races called is not new or unusual.
It is standard practice that once media organizations believe there is sufficient unofficial vote-counting information released to determine the eventual winner, they will announce a projected result.
These are, of course, only projections. In the days that follow, election officials release the updated vote counts as more are counted.
“State laws and practices vary on when mail ballot results, early voting results, and Election Day results are released,” the Bipartisan Policy Center explains. “State laws guide the certification timeline, but in some states, it can be several weeks after Election Day.”
But Melania appears to disagree with the process.
“An election should be held on a single day, and polls should close at midnight. Votes are counted, and that’s it. We need that certainty. That’s how fair elections should be done,” she writes.
In the chapter, she also addresses the January 6 Capitol riot and confirms that her former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, sent her a text on the day asking if she would denounce the violence going on outside.
While she is not named in the chapter, Grisham, who held the role from July 2019 to April 2020 before becoming the first lady’s communications director and chief of staff, revealed the exchange at this year’s Democratic National Convention where she backed Kamala Harris for president.
“On Jan. 6, I asked Melania if we can at least tweet that ‘while peaceful protest is the right of every American, there’s no place for lawlessness or violence,” Grisham, with the apparent text shown on screens behind her, said.
Melania simply responded: “No.”
From her view of the Capitol from the White House that day, Melania acknowledges noticing “a sizeable gathering of people” outside but she was focusing on other tasks.
When Grisham sent her the text message, Melania writes that she was “perplexed.”
She recalls: “At 2.25pm I received a text from my press secretary, who was not present in the White House; I don’t know if she was even in D.C. I glanced at her text. She was asking if I wanted to ‘denounce the violence.’ I found the question perplexing – when had I ever condoned violence?”
Blaming her staff for the failure in communication, she claims she “wasn’t aware” of the riots that were unfolding at the Capitol.
“Traditionally, the First Lady’s chief of staff provides detailed briefings surrounding our nation’s important issues,” she scorns. “My second White House chief of staff had failed to do so. Had I been fully informed of all the details, naturally, I would have immediately denounced the violence that occurred at the Capitol Building.”
Like her husband, she also takes aim at former vice president Mike Pence without attributing any blame to Trump for “inciting the mob” that day.
One allegation against the former president is that he was heard repeatedly shouting the word “hang” in his office while live TV showed a mob of his supporters at the Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence”, according to Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell book.
Melania, meanwhile, does go on to denounce violence of that day.
“While I recognized that many individuals felt the election was mishandled and that the vice president should half the confirmation process, we must never resort to violence,” she writes.
