Donald Trump briefly veered off course during his lengthy State of the Union address to spotlight his wife Melania, touching on everything from policy priorities to her growing profile in entertainment — and even suggesting she’s more widely liked than he is.
Roughly 90 minutes into the speech, Trump pivoted to mention Melania’s work over the past year, tying it to her recent Amazon documentary series.
Speaking to the chamber, Trump said: “Nobody cares more about protecting America’s youth than our first lady – she’s now a movie star, can you believe it? Who would’ve believed that?”
He followed with: “Over the past year she’s had an incredible impact, implementing AI legislation, advancing a landmark executive order on foster care and securing 30 million dollars to launch the Melania Trump foster youth to independence initiative. It’s tremendous.”
He then leaned into a mild, joking aside, claiming her initiatives were drawing far more cross-party backing than his own.
Trump continued: “It’s a really tremendous thing that happened and she got a lot of bipartisan support. She gets much better bipartisan support than I do. I get none, she gets a lot. Some day you’re going to have to tell me how you did that!”
Even so, recent polling suggests Melania remains divisive. A YouGov survey put her net approval rating at -16 — below Jill Biden’s (-9) — and well behind several former first ladies, including Nancy Reagan (+25), Rosalynn Carter (+32), Lady Bird Johnson (+23), Barbara Bush (+21), Michelle Obama (+21), and Laura Bush (+19).
The strongest rating on record, however, is attributed to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who posted +56 during her time as First Lady from 1961 to 1963 while married to President John F. Kennedy.
Trump has been bringing Melania into his public remarks more frequently in recent weeks, and this wasn’t the only recent example.
Last week, he revisited a tense moment at the United Nations headquarters in New York, describing how an escalator stopped abruptly just as he and Melania stepped on.
At the time, the incident reportedly wasn’t treated lightly by Trump’s team, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling for it to be ‘investigated immediately’.
But Trump later seemed to view it differently, saying: “I’ve had a good relationship [with the UN] other than when, at my last speech, they did turn off my teleprompter. I got up there, my teleprompter didn’t work.
” […] First I had an escalator that stopped. You know that it’s going up. Boom. It’s lucky that my movie star first lady in front of me because I put my hand on a certain part of her body and I was able to stop my fall.”
Continuing the unusual recollection, Trump added that Melania was ‘right in the proper location for me’.