Melania Trump gives robotic response when asked why husband returned to Butler

Melania Trump gave stiff, canned answers and left her interviewer grasping for more when asked about her husband’s return to the site of his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Fox News.

The former first lady sat down with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, a central target of the lawsuit filed against the network by Dominion Voting Systems after the 2020 election. She breathlessly lumped in the attempted assassination of the ex-president with the former president’s multiple criminal prosecutions.

Bartiromo also baselessly accused “top” officials at the Secret Service — along with the FBI and Department of Justice — of being “against President Trump and yourself from day one”.

But Melania Trump instead gave a PR-sounding response to Bartiromo’s question about how she felt about her husband returning to the same stage where he was almost killed just weeks ago. At the ex-president’s rally on Saturday, he suggested that he believed Democrats were behind the shooting in July.

“I think it’s great. I support him. And he is a fighter, he will never stop. He’s on the go every day. He’s helping this country. And he wants to make America great again,” she said. “And let’s see what happens on November 5.”

Bartiromo tried to press further, asking why she thought it was important for her husband to return.

She responded only that her husband wanted to “finish his speech.”

It was an odd moment for the former first lady, whose memoir is being released with just weeks to go in the election at a moment when her husband’s campaign is clearly trying to shore up support among women voters, beset by a historic gender gap in the polls.

Part of that effort has been an all-fronts-retreat on the issue of abortion rights, where the ex-president and his team are now frantically distancing themselves from not just unpopular statewide anti-abortion laws but also the ideas outlined in Project 2025 for a plan to track women across state lines if they seek abortion care while living in a state where it’s illegal.

Trump’s memoir is key to that effort, as she outlines her personal support for abortion rights in the books. Her husband has responded to the position taken by his wife only by saying he does not dictate her political stances or expressed opinions.

But Trump himself continues to bleed support among women. A poll from NBC News last month found Kamala Harris leading her opponent among women by a more than 20-point margin.

Part of that likely results from the Harris campaign’s efforts to highlight the worst consequences of state-level abortion bans, the very legislation Trump has patted himself on the back for enabling with his nominations to the Supreme Court preceding the fall of Roe v Wade.

The vice president’s campaign ads have centered stories from women whose lives were endangered — even some who died — as a result of hospitals being restricted or forbidden from performing abortion care.