If we ask Donald Trump, a man known for his family and his political and business life, whether we will see former First Lady Melania on the campaign trail more often, his eyes will light up.
For a moment.
“Well, I’d like to. That’s not the point. It’s a bad world for me,” he said, six weeks after a hitman’s bullet had shot through his ear.
“It’s not bad for Democrats like it is for me. And I wish my family didn’t have to go out and stand up for some of the things that you know are going on.”
Melania, he said, cares deeply about the country.
Donald Trump spoke to DailyMail.com about his pride in the role his family played in his campaign, but also his fear of the attacks they are facing.
“She’ll do whatever it takes. But my children haven’t been treated right,” he said. “She hasn’t been treated right.”
Visiting Mar-a-Lago off-season is like sneaking behind the curtain of Trump World. The club is closed until Halloween, while members spend the summer in the less humid air of Europe or California.
Half of the lawns have been removed and reseeded. An outbuilding is having its terracotta tiles replaced.
But the living room is a hotbed of activity, the hub of Donald Trump’s business and political life.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a key player in his administration and 2020 election campaign, emerges from the tea room after a business meeting.
Corey Lewandowski, who recently joined the campaign as a senior, hangs nearby, checking his phone.
And Eric Trump, executive vice chairman of the Trump Organization, comes and goes with the air of a man who spent part of his youth among the club’s antique Spanish tiles, arches and heraldic carvings.
Trump spoke to DailyMail.com last Wednesday as part of a strategy to keep the media pressure on his opponent Kamala Harris, who by then had not given an interview as the Democratic nominee in 38 days.
It seemed like a strategy that was working for her, as her fundraising reached record highs and she surpassed Trump in national polls, all without the risk of uncomfortable questions.
Trump and his team had expected it to be a honeymoon when Democrats dropped the 81-year-old Biden and he insisted he was pleased with the way his campaign was going.
Trump became animated when he spoke about his family’s role in the campaign
The former First Lady has made few appearances thus far. She is seen here arriving at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July
Former President Donald Trump, second from right, his wife Melania, second from left, their son Barron, center, and father-in-law Viktor Knavs, left, stand outside Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church at the start of the funeral of Amalija Knavs, the former first lady’s mother, in Palm Beach, Florida, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024
“You know, they had no resilience at their convention. You saw the numbers,” he said, referring to polls showing Harris appeared to have lost support after a week of media focus on Democrats in Chicago.
“And the reason is she won’t talk to anybody. So it’s either because she can’t explain how she changed every policy she had, or she’s incompetent.”
He was still enthusiastic about endorsements from Robert J. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and left questions about how he would close his polling deficit unanswered.
“It’s been a great month,” he said. “I don’t understand that question.”
Trump doesn’t normally give interviews in the living room at Mar-a-Lago. The gold-leaf ceiling, modeled after the Thousand-Wing Ceiling at the Accademia in Venice, is a glittering distraction with its shimmering sunbeams.
The walls are decorated with enormous silk embroidery panels from a Venetian palace, all acquired by the house’s original owner, Marjorie Merriweather Post, who bequeathed it to the nation as the ‘Winter White House’.
That’s what happened when Trump came to power in 2017. He hosted world leaders and ran his administration between rounds of golf, away from Washington on weekends.
Trump made headlines in the interview, in which he said he had reservations about Florida’s six-week abortion law and hinted that he might vote for a referendum to expand abortion access. Two days later, he reversed his position
The interview took place in the spectacular living room, seen here in 1967
Trump holds his fist up as his father speaks during a campaign rally at Trump National Doral Miami, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Doral, Florida.
These days, Trump is too busy for a full 18 holes. Instead, with the campaign in full swing, he said he had just hit a few balls at his golf club in West Palm Beach (about a 10-minute drive away) before sitting down with DailyMail.com.
Meanwhile, he’s experimenting with new audiences by reaching out to YouTubers and other types of online “influencers,” thanks to his own in-house Gen Z expert: 18-year-old son Barron.
“He knows so much about it,” he said, his eyes full of fatherly pride. “Adin Ross, you know, I mean, I know people I didn’t know that well, from another generation. He knows them all. And we’ve had tremendous success.”
The livestream with Ross was filmed at Mar-a-Lago and at its peak had more than 580,000 live viewers, making it the third most concurrently watched stream on the Kick platform this year.
Trump looked relaxed as he picked out a playlist in a Tesla Cyber Truck and even danced with Ross at the end.
He also showed another side of himself when he appeared as a guest on Barron Trump’s favorite podcast, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, at one point discussing the intricacies of alcohol and illegal narcotics.
“Is cocaine stronger?” the former president asked.
In an exclusive interview, Trump discussed everything from the aftermath of a bullet piercing his ear to campaign policy and status
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Vice President Kamala Harris over her legal record during an appearance with livestreamer Adin Ross on his Kick show
Trump was also recently interviewed by Theo Von for his podcast, one of the effects of Barron Trump’s influencer network in their attempt to win the vote of Gen Z
He’s trailing his rival among younger voters, according to the latest JL Partners/DailyMail.com poll, which found that 32 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds plan to vote for Trump, compared with 48 percent for Harris (though Trump holds a two-point lead overall.’
But Barron’s is trying to bridge that gap by using platforms that were new to Trump, who stumbled over the details as he tried to describe them.
“We have three unusual… I don’t know what you would call them, but it’s a platform with three people that I don’t know, but three people that Barron knows very well,” he said.
“He actually calls them all friends of his, because it’s a different generation. They don’t grow up watching television like we did. They grow up with the internet or a computer, right?”
Like his protective mother, Barron rarely has contact with his father.
Melania has chosen her moments carefully. She received a thunderous reception at the party convention in Milwaukee and issued a public statement after the assassination attempt on her husband, calling on people to remember that love was worth more than political differences.
For Trump, it’s one thing to be getting the bullets and the rocks, but it’s quite another to have his family in the firing line.
“My children have given up so much, and all they’ve done is get blamed for Russia, Russia, Russia and all these hoaxes, you know, misinformation, disinformation,” he said.
“I don’t want them to be affected by the terrible things that Democrats want to do.”
