(Melania Trump talked to Anderson Cooper on CNN on Monday.CNN/Screenshot)
Melania Trump on Monday night spoke out at length for the first time since multiple women accused her husband of sexual assault and a 2005 tape surfaced of his bragging about groping women and kissing them without permission.
Trump attempted to discredit the women accusing her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and dismissed his lewd words in the leaked video as "boys' talk."
"It's kind of two teenage boys — actually they should behave better, right?" she said to Anderson Cooper on CNN as he interrupted her to say the real-estate mogul was 59 at the time of the 2005 tape. "Correct. I sometimes have said I have two boys at home: I have my young son, and I have my husband."
Melania and Donald Trump's only child together, Barron, is 10 years old. Donald Trump also has two other sons and two daughters from his two previous marriages.
Throughout the CNN interview, Trump painted the accusations and tape as a conspiracy between the "dishonest," "left-wing" media and the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to take down her husband — an argument he has increasingly made in the past few days.
"I believe my husband," she said. "This was all organized from the opposition. With the details that they go [with], did they ever check the background of these women? They don't have any facts."
Melania Trump said she believes the media and the Clintons are working together against her husband https://t.co/cJafkDu4qW
Cooper brought up a passionate speech Michelle Obama gave on Thursday ripping Donald Trump for what the first lady called "sexually predatory behavior": "She was saying that essentially any unwanted advance toward a woman — kissing a woman, touching a woman without consent — that is sexual assault; that's the definition."
"Yes, I agree with that," Melania Trump said. "But every assault should be taken care of in a court of law, and to accuse — no matter who it is, a man or a woman — without evidence, it's damaging and it's unfair."
Trump told Cooper she "wasn't surprised" a tape like the 2005 one surfaced because her husband had participated in so many interviews over the years.
"It's very hard especially for him when he decided to run for presidency because he did so many stuff in his life," she said. "He was on so many tapes, so many shows. We knew that, that tapes would come out, people would want to go against him. But my husband is real; he's raw; he tells it as it is; he's kind; he's a gentleman. He supports everybody; he supports women. He encourages them to go to the highest level, to achieve the dreams. He employs many, many women."