Former First Lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance Friday the at a National Archives Naturalization Ceremony. She delivered a speech about immigration, and it’s already causing a stir.
“Obstacles often stand in the way of our goals, we preserve,” said Melania, who was born and grew up in Slovenia. CNN’s Kristen Holmes also reported that Melania said something “remarkable” when she discussed how hard the U.S. immigration process can be. Holmes said this is remarkable because her husband, former President Donald Trump, is vowing to make that process harder if he is elected to a second term in in 2024.
According to The Hill, Trump recently pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in the polls. Trump and Biden are likely headed for a presidential election re-match next year.
The Hill also mentioned another bit of CNN reporting regarding Melania’s speech. It said that, in an interview with the outlet, her former Stephanie Winston Wolkoff called the speech “repulsive.” Wolcott previously wrote about Melania in a tell-all book.
Newsweek reported that Wolkoff wasn’t the only person to criticize Melania’s speech. It said that people have also taken to social media. Some made similar comments to Wolkoff and others indicated the speech may have been plagiarized – something Melania has been accused of in the past.
Holmes also noted that Melania has rarely been seen since Trump announced his plans to run for president again last November. Audacy has reported on her pull-back from the public eye, and recently a report that she wants Trump to pick former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as his vice president.
As Melania’s rare speech made news this week, her husband continued to as well. CNN sources told the outlet that a “binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed,” per a Friday report.
It said that the information still has not been found.
Trump then made his own controversial speech Saturday. He quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin to call Biden a “threat to democracy,” and praised two other authoritarian world leaders: Hungarian President Viktor Orban and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said CNN.
Additionally, the GOP frontrunner “doubled down on language condemned for its ties to White supremacist rhetoric,” and said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
“Insinuating that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ echoes nativist talking points and has the potential to cause real danger and violence,” said Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in October, according to CNN. The outlet said that the Saturday comment is an example of increasingly violent rhetoric from Trump.