Former President Trump said the former first lady Melania Trump will be out on the campaign trail “quite a bit,” after he was asked if the public should expect to see more of her at events.
The former president, during a town hall with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, heaped praise on his wife, calling her a “private person” who is focused on their family. But he suggested she will be on the road with him more often in the future.
“It’s funny, she was a very successful model, very, very successful, and yet she was a private person. She’s going to be out a lot. Not because she likes doing it, but she likes the results,” he said Tuesday. “She wants to see this country really succeed. She loves the country.”
“You know, a lot of first ladies would go out — they want to be everywhere. They get angry at their husband because he’s not introducing them,” Trump continued. “If I didn’t introduce Melania, she’d be very happy about it. She’s just a different kind of a person.”
Trump, the likely GOP nominee for president, called Melania a “very brilliant person,” who “speaks many languages,” referring to an earlier comment from Ingraham about how that could be an asset on the campaign trail.
He also commended his wife for raising his youngest and “very tall” son Baron, who is 17.
“Her life evolves around that boy,” Trump said. “It’s so important to her. At the same time, it also revolves around our country and the success of our country. She’s raised a lot of money for charity. She’s a private person.”
“And she loves the country. She’s going to be out a lot but she does it for the good of the country, not for her,” he said. “She’s somebody with a lot of confidence. She doesn’t need that.”
Trump said last month that he expected Melania Trump to join him soon, saying in an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade that “she wants to make America great again, too.”
“She’s gonna play, and she always did play a big role,” he said of his wife. “She was somebody that you could rely on.”
Melania Trump has been largely absent from the campaign trail during the former president’s bid to return to the White House. The husband of former President Trump’s remaining challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has also been missing from her events due to his military deployment overseas — a fact the former president has pointed out.