‘Let Us Reunite. Now.’
‘Let Us Reunite. Now.’
Former First Lady Melania Trump calls for unity, civility after apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump.
Former First Lady Melania Trump is calling for unity and civility among Americans in a silence-shattering statement released this morning, less than 24 hours after her husband, former President Donald Trump, survived an apparent attempted assassination at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“America, the fabric of our gentle nation is tattered, but our courage and common sense must ascend and bring us back together as one,” the former first lady said in the one-in-a-half page statement that addresses the victims of the shooting, the valiant work of Secret Service agents, and America at large.
“Let us reunite. Now,” she says. “This morning ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends. We can realize this world again. Each of us must demand to get it back. We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships, again.”
“Let us reunite. Now,” she says. “This morning ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends. We can realize this world again. Each of us must demand to get it back. We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships, again.”
— Former First Lady Melania Trump
The FBI has named Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspected shooter. One man identified as Corey Comperatore, who attended the rally, was killed while two other people remain in critical condition, according to The Associated Press.
The former first lady has remained mostly silent in recent months, making rare appearances alongside her husband at political events.
Melania Trump goes on in her statement to vividly describe how she felt in the moment watching the violent scene unfold, a part of the statement that stood out to Anita McBride, director of the First Ladies Initiative at American University and former chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush.
“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” Melania Trump says in her statement posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change.”
— Former First Lady Melania Trump
McBride, co-author of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women, told East Wing Magazine in a phone interview that the fear Mrs. Trump felt for herself and her son, Barron, and what they could lose in that moment—her husband and his father—harkened back to the response of former First Lady Nancy Reagan after the 1981 assassination attempt of her husband, former President Ronald Reagan.
The statement, McBride says, illustrates “how shocking and how horrible that was for [Melania Trump] in that moment; to think that their lives would have been changed forever.”
In Nancy Reagan’s autobiography, My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan, Mrs. Reagan describes the great fear and anxiety the near-fatal shooting of her husband two months after his inauguration caused her.
“[Mrs. Reagan] didn’t know how she could live the next eight years with this constant fear that something would happen to her husband,” McBride says. “And she did live that way. She was constantly worried and said that night after night, she couldn’t drive those gruesome thoughts and images from her mind.”
As a result, Mrs. Reagan used astrology to control her husband’s schedule to great ridicule by the press. She consulted famed astrologer Joan Quigley and later explained that it was used as a coping mechanism to help deal with the trauma of the event, according to Remember the First Ladies.
In Melania Trump’s statement she also thanks the Secret Service agents and law enforcement and then turns her attention to the families of innocent victims killed and injured in the shooting.
“To the families of the innocent victims who are now suffering from this heinous act, I humbly offer my sincerest sympathy,” she says. “Your need to summon your inner strength for such a terrible reason saddens me.”
The former first lady addresses the shooter, calling him a “monster” who “recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine.” She went on to share personal aspects of her husband that included “his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration.”
This other aspect—the humanizing of politicians—is what McBride believes is the most poignant part of the statement.
“If that doesn’t underscore exactly what first ladies through history have done, or tried to do,” McBride says. “To humanize who these people are that are running for political office and remind everyone that they are human beings with families, with people who love them.”
Mrs. Trump revisits that notion at the end of her statement where she closes with this:
“I commend those of you who have reached out beyond the political divide—thank you for remembering that every single politician is a man or a woman with a loving family.”
“I commend those of you who have reached out beyond the political divide—thank you for remembering that every single politician is a man or a woman with a loving family.”
— Former First Lady Melania Trump
Whether or not Melania Trump’s statement helps tamp down the divisiveness in the country remains to be seen.
“I don’t think that there’s a question that [Melania Trump] holds an influential role with him, with her husband as a confidant … as someone who brings a perspective that he appreciates,” McBride says.
However, the assassination attempt, McBride says, will live on as another marker in American history and personally for Mrs. Trump.
“It lived with Mrs. Reagan until the moment she took her last breath,” McBride says. “I am sure Mrs. Trump, and through her statement too, [speaks to] how devastatingly close it came for their lives changing forever. She’s not going to forget that.”