Melania rounds off Africa tour
US First Lady ‘does not always agree’ with her husband
Smiling for the cameras in the shadow of the pyramids, US First Lady Melania Trump wrapped up her four-nation Africa tour in Egypt on Saturday, far from the political tumult back home.
In rare comments to the press, she said her trip – which also took in Ghana, Malawi and Kenya – was designed to “show the world that we care.”
Asked about reports earlier this year that her husband President Donald Trump referred to African nations and Haiti as “shithole countries,” the First Lady said “nobody discussed that with me and I never heard him saying those comments.”
“I don’t always agree what he thinks and I tell him that,” Melania said. “I give him my honest opinion and honest advice and sometimes he listens, and sometimes he doesn’t.
“I have my own voice and my opinions and it’s very important for me that I express what I feel,” she added.
The low-key tour came to an end as her husband was set to score a big political win after days of acrimonious deadlock inside and outside the Senate over his Supreme Court pick.
Melania finished the Egypt leg of her tour with a visit to the Giza pyramids near Cairo, where she posed at the foot of the Spinx, wearing a white panama hat.
On the previous leg of her tour in Kenya, her choice of a white colonial-style pith helmet while on safari drew some criticism on Twitter, with one person comparing her look to that of a “colonial administrator.”
In her comments to the press on Saturday, Melania said she wanted “to talk about my trip and not what I wear.”
Earlier in the day the former model stepped off a plane at Cairo international airport wearing high-waisted white pants, a pleated white shirt and a black tie with a beige jacket.
She was welcomed by Egyptian First Lady Intissar Amer alSisi, an observant Muslim who wore an ankle-length blue dress and matching headscarf.
Security was tight with police deployed along the route and on rooftops as her convoy drove from the airport to the presidential palace.
The visit came as Egyptian security forces face a persistent jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula across the Suez Canal to the northeast.