Melania Trump doesn't want people to feel sorry for her: 'I filed a few lawsuits'

'People think and talk about me like, ‘Oh, Melania, poor Melania.’ Don’t feel sorry for me,' Ms Trump says

Melania Trump (Getty)

Melania Trump has, perhaps wisely, taken more of a backseat during her husband’s ever controversial presidential campaign. Aside from a speech at the Republican National Convention, which later turned into an embarrassing plagiarism row, and the occasional interview, she has kept away from the cameras and newspapers and instead left her husband in the limelight.

As Donald Trump's campaign hits more turbulence thanks to a leaked 2005 tape of the billionaire business magnate making lewd and sexist comments about women emerging, followed by a string of allegations of sexual assault and harassment, which he has strenuously denied, speculation over how Ms Trump is thinking and feeling grows.

Now, three weeks before US citizens will head to the polls, Ms Trump has appeared in a rare national television interview urging people not to feel sorry for her.

“I’m very strong, people they don’t really know me,” she told CNN. “People think and talk about me like, ‘Oh, Melania, poor Melania.’ Don’t feel sorry for me, don’t feel sorry for me. I can handle everything.”

When Anderson Cooper asked how Ms Trump was doing in the wake of weeks of sexual assault allegations which have been levied at her husband, she said she has been doing “great”.

“I’m great, I’m very strong, I’m very confident and I live my life. I take care of myself and of our son and my husband and I’m doing great.”

In a defiant message, Ms Trump referred to the legal action she is taking against publications who she claims have written lies about her.

“The press is very dishonest and it’s a lot of lies they have written, also about me, and my husband. You need to defend yourself all the time. As you may have heard, I filed a few lawsuits and I’m in the court now because they accuse me of doing stuff that I never did in my life and they wrote lies and I will not allow that. I will fight until the end because I don’t want them to damage my reputation and my name,” she said.

Ms Trump also said if she finds herself in the White House her focus will be on “children and women”, specifically on the dangers of social media towards children. In a vastly different approach to social media to that taken by her husband, the 46-year-old said she stopped posting on her pages a year and a half ago, limiting her direct involvement to just a few posts every now and again.

“I decided not to be on social media anymore because I see the negativity and it’s not healthy,” she explained.

Elsewhere in the interview, Ms Trump also dismissed the comments her husband made in a leaked tape from 2005 – where he boasted he could use his fame to "grab [women] by the p***y" – as "boys talk" and said he was "egged on" by Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.

"Sometimes I say I have two boys at home, I have my young son and I have my husband. But I know how some men talk and that's how I saw it, yes," she said.