First lady talks Trump and tweets
‘Focus on what I do, not what I wear,’ she says
With the Great Sphinx of Gaza looming in the background, first lady Melania Trump weighed in on a number of topics Saturday, including the media obsession with her wardrobe, Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court, and her confession that sometimes she lobbies the tweeter-in-chief to put down his phone.
Trump spoke to reporters in Egypt at the end of a four-country trip to Africa. She also stopped in Ghana, Malawi and Kenya.
The first lady said she thinks Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is “highly qualified,” but she also said of his primary accuser, Christine Blasey Ford:: “I’m glad Dr. Ford was heard.”
Asked if she believed Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual abusing her when they were teenagers, the first lady said, “I will move on that... I think we need to help all the victims .. I am against any kind of abuse or violence.”
On her view of her husband’s sometimes sharp or derogatory comments, particularly on Twitter, she said, “I don’t always agree what he tweets, and I give him my honest advice ... It’s very important that I express what I feel.”
Asked if she had ever asked the president to put down his phone, she said, with a smile: “Yes.”
On other topics, Trump said she wishes people would “focus on what I do, not what I wear.”
This past week, some eyebrows were raised when the first lady wore a pith helmet – a symbol of British colonial rule across Africa – during a brief safari in Kenya.