Donald Trump appeared to struggle to understand a question during a dinner in the White House Rose Garden, but his wife Melania was on hand to help
President Donald Trump, aged 79, was aided by first lady Melania Trump during a televised dinner with tech industry bigwigs on Thursday when he misinterpreted a reporter’s question about his intentions to converse with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“After your phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky today, do you plan to speak with Russia’s President Putin in the near future?” a journalist queried during the AI-focused event. “What?” Trump responded faintly, turning towards the first lady for clarification. “If you’re going to speak with President Putin in the near future,” Melania reiterated.
The public dinner, hosted in the recently refurbished White House Rose Garden, saw attendance from two dozen leaders of the tech world, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Google’s Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
In a show of allegiance to Trump since his return to office earlier this year, many tech moguls have abandoned policies advocating diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just last month, Apple’s Cook presented Trump with a lavish, glass trophy during his visit to the White House, marking his company’s $100 billion pledge to U.S. manufacturing, reports the Mirror US.
Speculation about Trump’s actual health condition erupted over the weekend following his notable disappearance from public view for almost a week. His prolonged absence sparked a flood of conspiracy theories, with attention drawn to his July diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency and persistent images showing a recurring mark on his hand.
Some conspiracy theorists went as far as to suggest Trump had passed away during the weekend. Nevertheless, he emerged at the White House for a press briefing early in the week and dismissed health-related speculation when questioned about it.
By rescuing the president from a hearing-related blunder on Thursday, the first lady highlighted her increasingly prominent position in Trump’s administration during his second tenure. Though rarely spotted alongside Trump publicly, and spending most of her time between Manhattan and Palm Beach, the first lady is reportedly in continuous contact with Trump throughout each day, according to sources familiar with the pair who spoke to CNN last week.
“I tell the first lady, ‘You know, I spoke to Vladimir [Putin] today – we had a wonderful conversation,'” Trump recalled during a July Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “She said, ‘Oh, really? Another city was just hit.'” The former first lady made her mark during Trump’s “peace summit” with Putin last month in Alaska, which wrapped up ahead of schedule after Trump was unable to broker a deal.
She penned an emotional letter to Putin, who faces charges from the International Criminal Court for the war crime of unlawfully deporting children, pleading with him to think of the innocent youngsters caught up in his continuing conflict with Ukraine.
She told the Russian president he possessed the ability to “singlehandedly restore their melodic laughter.”
Trump is said to have personally delivered her letter to Putin before their discussions began.
Whilst Melania Trump hasn’t publicly declared her position on the wars in Ukraine or Gaza, both conflicts have involved the abuse or deaths of thousands of children – a matter that insiders say troubles her deeply.
“I think that a lot of people underestimate how normal of a couple they are. … He listens to her and seeks her counsel,” a source familiar with the Trumps told CNN. “She only wades in when she really will go to the paint on something – and she really cares about kids.”
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