First lady Melania Trump once again showed she shares her husband's love for hyperbole, this time claiming that she is perhaps "the most bullied person" in the entire world.
In an exclusive interview with ABC World News Tonight, which took place during her first solo tour as first lady and will air Friday, Trump said her own experience with bullying led her in part to create her program Be Best.
"I could say that I'm the most bullied person in the world," she said. When pressed, she added: "One of them, if you really see what people are saying about me ... That's why my Be Best initiative is focusing on social media and online behavior."
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EXCLUSIVE: First lady Melania Trump says her “Be Best” policy platform targeting online bullies is personal. “I could say that I’m the most bullied person in the world,” she tells ABC. https://t.co/9jzGiHoBDz pic.twitter.com/k2vwyWaErB
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 11, 2018
It's been reported that Trump didn't want to be first lady "come hell or high water" and had trouble adapting to her new role because she's always been a very private person. And as soon as her husband announced his presidential bid, everything from her career as a model to her accent has been dissected and mocked at a rate she wasn't used to as a public figure or even signed up for.
And while she has her own troubling views, the brunt of the criticism and questions Trump has faced are about her husband's behavior — even though he's an adult and she's not his mother.
During the interview, Trump added on the topic of bullying: "We need to educate the children of social and emotional behavior, so when they grow up and they know how to deal with those issues. That's very important."
But like in the past, Trump didn't address her own husband's troubling social media behavior. The president, both on Twitter and in real life, belittles and insults everyone from sexual assault survivors and people with disabilities to former White House staffers and sitting U.S. senators, including a dying man.
This dissonance between the first lady's anti-bullying platform and the president's bully tendencies raise questions about how much she really cares about her Be Best initiative. Like her stepdaughter Ivanka, it's not Trump's business to publicly antagonize her husband or be responsible for his actions. But as long as the first lady claims she is the "most bullied person in the world" and that she wants to prevent that from impacting children, while her husband cruelly attacks enemies both real and imagined, her anti-bullying advocacy and motives will continue to be dissected.
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