“People love our first lady, I think,” said former President Donald Trump Wednesday to applause during a rally in Uniondale, New York. “Go out and get her book. She just wrote a book. I hope she said good things about… I don’t know, I didn’t… so busy.”
Although the GOP’s presidential candidate appeared to admit he hadn’t read his wife’s memoir, he still gave it a plug.
“She just wrote a book called ‘Melania’ go out and buy it, it’s great,” he said of former First Lady Melania Trump. “And if she says bad things about me, I’ll call you all up and I’ll say: ‘Don’t buy it, get rid of it.’”
According to The Independent, “Donald Trump is not thought to be a big reader,” and he has cited his own books written with the help of co-writers – “The Art of the Deal” and “Surviving at the Top” – as his favorites. Journalist Michael Wolff wrote in his book “Fire and Fury” that Trump “didn’t read, and that “some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate,” per The Atlantic. Melania has also received criticism for using parts of a speech by former First Lady Michelle Obama without attribution, and her speechwriter apologized, NPR reported.
However, The Independent also said the former president is believed to have read Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I drama “All Quiet on the Western Front”. It has also reported on his fondness for quoting the lyrics to “The Snake,” a song written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963 that Trump often uses to accentuate anti-immigration messages.
In addition to plugging Melania’s book, Trump shared some humorous stories about phone calls with his wife during the Wednesday rally. He said he would ask her how his rallies went and she would tell him his hair looked horrible or that he couldn’t find his way off the stage. To that last one, Trump said his comeback was that he was pretending to be President Joe Biden.
“So, I call up my wife and I say: ‘Baby, who can draw crowds – nobody can draw crowds like me. Nobody, not even close. I’m the greatest of all time, maybe even greater than Elvis,” he added.
Around this point in the speech, Trump also said that “sarcasm with the media doesn’t work,” and that he’s “given up about 90% of it.”
Audacy first reported on Melania’s upcoming book in July and revealed more information about the publication last month. It is now available for pre-order and it is expected to be released Oct. 1.
The former first lady has kept a low public profile since Trump left office in 2021. The Independent noted this week that she hasn’t been seen on the campaign trail, though she has attended some fundraising events. Melania also attended the Republican National Convention, though she didn’t make a speech. It is typically customary for the spouse of a nominee to do so.
“Melania also stayed away from her husband’s five-week-long hush-money trial over a payment to adult actor Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged 2006 affair, which the former president denies,” said The Independent. “He was convicted on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, but sentencing has been delayed until after the election in November.”
With the impending release of her book, Melania has become more active on social media. She has addressed the Federal Bureau of Investigation raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., as well as assassination attempts on her husband’s life this year.
“I never imagined my privacy would be invaded by the government here, in America,” she said.
There have also been posts with clues about what to expect from her book. For example, she posted a new video to social media about the book on Sept. 5.
“Writing this memoir has been a deeply personal and reflective journey for me,” Melania said in the video. “As a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation, I feel the responsibility to clarify the facts. I believe it is important to share my perspective. The truth.”
This Friday, she shared a post about her work to renovate the Rose Garden. She said the Committee for the Preservation of the White House asked her to take on the project and that she worked with her team “to safeguard this piece of our history.”
That followed a Thursday video in which she addressed her nude modelling work.
“Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modelling work?” Melania, who was a successful model before she became first lady, asked in that video. “The more pressing question is: why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot? Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body?”
In a video last week, Melania also discussed motherhood. Her son with Trump, Barron, turned 18 this year and is attending college in New York City. Melania, 54, and Trump, 78, married in 2005.
According to the description of the book on Amazon, Melania “reflects on her Slovenian childhood, the pivotal moments that led her to the world of high fashion in Europe and New York, and the serendipitous meeting with Donald Trump,” in the upcoming memoir. It describes the couple’s meeting as “a chance encounter that forever changed the course of her life.”