Former President Donald Trump opened up about the "mystery" surrounding his wife and former first lady Melania Trump in a new interview with Megyn Kelly.
Describing Melania, the former president said, "I think part of the beauty is that mystery."
"She doesn't need to be out there [to get interviewed]. She has confidence. She has a lot of self-confidence," he responded when Kelly asked what it was people misunderstood about his wife.
Despite being a prominent fixture in her husband's 2016 presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, Melania has kept a low public profile, giving few interviews and being portrayed in the media as an enigma that contrasted the image of other first ladies before her. Since leaving the White House, she has rarely been spotted by her husband's side, even as he's launched a third presidential bid and appeared at various arraignments and hearings related to his four criminal indictments.
Although Melania hasn't been on the campaign trail this time around, her husband said many of his supporters continue to express their admiration for her.
"She was a very popular first lady," he told Kelly in an interview that aired on Thursday. "I mean, I go out to rallies, and they have pictures of Melania [and say], 'We love our first lady.' So many posters were there in the audience...We had the biggest rallies we've ever had."
The interview on Kelly's SiriusXM podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show is the first time the two have sat down in seven years.
While discussing Melania's mysterious nature, the former president recalled a conversation he had with the late journalist Barbara Walters about actress Greta Garbo and alluded to parallels between the Hollywood icon and his wife.
"I said [to Walters], 'You've interviewed everybody, who was the one that you would like to interview more than anybody else? She said, 'That's easy, Greta Garbo.'...she was a great actress...But she was very reclusive, never did an interview. I don't see Melania as like that, but she's introspective, and she's confident," he said.
The former president also expressed his upset that Vogue profiled White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last week but never put his wife, a former model, on the cover after he entered politics.
"[Melania] was on the cover of Vogue before she met me and during. But once I said, 'I'm running for president,' that was that was the end of the coverage...It's so sad, but she doesn't care," he said.
"She's been on the cover of the magazines for a long time. And she was on the cover of Vogue before. And she was actually very friendly with [Vogue editor-in-chief] Anna Wintour. But once I ran for politics, that was the end of that. That's okay. She's very, she's a very calm person."
Newsweek reached out to Trump via email for comment.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
