Incoming first lady Melania Trump said Monday she is entering the White House more confidently than she did eight years ago and will expand her social media and anti-bullying campaign in her husband’s second term.
Speaking to Fox News, Mrs. Trump said the initial move in 2017 was “challenging” and seemed to suggest that the Obama administration withheld information from the Trumps.
This time, “I know the rooms where we will be living, I know the process,” she said in a prerecorded interview for “Fox & Friends.”
She hopes her campaign to support children and their social and mental health, “Be Best,” receives more support from online companies than it did in the first term.
In the past, the campaign suffered from critics who mocked the name as awkward and said the first lady’s husband, President Trump, had a penchant for online insults.
“Imagine what we could do in those years if they will rally behind me,” Mrs. Trump said.
Mrs. Trump said the transition team has a five-hour window to move her family into the White House on Inauguration Day.
The Bidens “are still living there, and they will be out on Jan. 20,” Mrs. Trump said. “Everything needs to be planned to the minute.”
Mrs. Trump said she would spend time in Washington but travel to the Trump residences in Palm Beach, Florida, or New York City — where her son, Barron, is attending college — as needed.
The former first lady said Barron Trump would be free to bring his college friends to the White House. She also pledged to keep a slim East Wing staff so she does not spend too much taxpayer money.
Mrs. Trump, who released a memoir during the campaign last year, said she is also releasing a movie about her life.
“I just feel that people didn’t accept me, maybe, they didn’t understand me the way they do now,” Mrs. Trump said. “I’m standing on my own two feet, independent. I have my own thoughts, I have my own ’yes’ and ’no.’”
She said sometimes Mr. Trump seeks her advice on matters.
“Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t,” she said. “And that’s OK.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.