Husband-of-the-Year Alert: Melania Trump Says the Ex-President “Lets Her Believe” in Abortion Rights (as He Decimates Them for Others)

Melania Trump declared in an interview over the weekend that her husband, Donald Trump, “lets her believe” in abortion rights, which must be tremendous comfort to the millions of people from whom he helped strip that exact right the last time he was president, and the many millions more who fear he’ll take an even bigger ax to reproductive freedom in a potential second term.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, the former first lady said that her husband was aware of her support for abortion rights “since the day” they met. Her comments came shortly after the Guardian revealed that in her forthcoming memoir, Melania writes that she is a passionate supporter of the right to choose, and that women should be able to get abortions whenever they want, without the government getting a say. “I believe in individual freedom. I want to decide what I want to do with my body. I think I don’t want government in my personal business,” she reiterated while speaking to Fox. Asked about the decision to go public with her heretofore unknown beliefs just over a month to go before the election, she said: “Well, that was not written in the last week or the last month. That book was written months before, and it was in print months before. So that was my belief, and it is my belief, and I wanted to put it in the book because I want to be authentic.”

In an obvious effort to paint her husband as something other than a right-wing autocrat who proudly brags about killing Roe v. Wade, and whose running mate previously called for a national abortion ban, the former first lady told Fox the ex-president “lets me be who I am.” She added: “He lets me believe what I believe. He lets me be my own person. And he respects that, and I respect that as I let him be his own person. He has different beliefs, and he will do what he believes.” (“He will do what he believes” would, of course, be less of a chilling statement if the husband in question were some random dude with no power over other people’s bodies, though unfortunately that is very much not the case.)

Apparently seeking to further this narrative that Trump is an incredible partner and that the nation should not fear him retaking power come January 2025, Trump delivered a similar party line when asked this weekend about Melania’s take on abortion.

In other news concerning the former, and possibly future, first lady, Melania also reportedly reveals in her book that her husband invited her into the Situation Room to watch the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, despite not having the security clearance to do so.

And in a promo video released on social media Saturday, she said there was “an undeniable spark” from the moment she met “Donald,” and that there was something “magnetic” about “his confidence, his charm, his humor, his vision.”

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