text: Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, spoke out for the first time Monday since a videotape was released of her husband making lewd comments about women in 2005, saying, "we are moving on." 
   
   Trump made the comments to Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt in an interview Tuesday morning on "Fox & Friends." 
   
   “Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate,” Trump told Fox News. “And he apologized to me. And I expect -- I accept his apology. And we are moving on.” 
   
   Trump added that she believes the mainstream media wants to damage her and her family by “saying lies about me, lies about my family.” 
   
   She said in the interview that the comments that were made on the tape were not made by the person she knows and that any other allegation of Donald Trump’s sexual misconduct should be handled in court. 
   
   Trump was then asked what she would tell women who were deterred because of the lewd tapes. 
   
   “My husband is kind and he’s a gentleman. He cares about people. He cares about women.” 
   
   She also said that it's fair for the media and her husband to bring up former President Bill Clinton's infidelities amid his wife's presidential campaign. 
   
   “They're asking for it. They started,” Trump said, referring to nude images from the 1990s published by the New York Post earlier this year. “They started from the beginning of the campaign putting my picture from modeling days." 
   
   "That was my modeling days and I'm proud what I did. I worked very hard,” she added. 
   
   Melania Trump's image later was used in a negative ad campaign during the Republican primary. 
   
   At the time of its release, Donald Trump accused former rival Ted Cruz of being involved and responded by tweeting an unflattering image of the Texas senator's wife. Cruz denied involvement in the release of the photos. 
   
   As for any debate advice for her husband, Trump said that he should “be himself and talk about the issues.” ||||| (CNN) Melania Trump defended Donald Trump in her first interview since the Republican nominee faced allegations of sexual misconduct, calling those accusations "lies" and saying Trump was "egged on" into "boy talk" during a 2005 tape in which he made lewd comments about women. 
   
   "I believe my husband. I believe my husband," she said in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday. 
   
   "This was all organized from the opposition. And with the details ... did they ever check the background of these women? They don't have any facts." 
   
   She also said she hadn't heard her husband use that kind of language before. 
   
   "No. No, that's why I was surprised, because I said like I don't know that person that would talk that way, and that he would say that kind of stuff in private," Melania Trump said. 
   
   "I heard many different stuff -- boys talk," she said. "The boys, the way they talk when they grow up and they want to sometimes show each other, 'Oh, this and that' and talking about the girls. But yes, I was surprised, of course." 
   
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   She specifically attacked a first-person account in People Magazine, in which journalist Natasha Stoynoff said Trump made an unwanted advance while she worked on a story about his one-year wedding anniversary. 
   
   The reporter described a chance encounter later with Melania Trump, who says it never happened -- and her lawyers have threatened to sue over the claim. 
   
   "Even the story that came out in people magazine, the writer she said my husband took her to the room and start kissing her," she said. "She wrote in the same story about me -- that she saw me on 5th Avenue, and I said to her, 'Natasha, how come we don't see you anymore?' I was never friends with her, I would not recognize her." 
   
   That, Melania Trump said, "was another thing like people come out saying lies and not true stuff." 
   
   'Egged on' 
   
   It was the first public defense Melania Trump has made of her husband since a tape in which Trump bragged about sexually aggressive behavior toward women was published by The Washington Post and NBC. In the wake of that report, several women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. 
   
   Trump said her husband was "egged on" in the 2005 tape in which he made lewd comments about his own sexually aggressive behavior toward women -- remarks she says were "boy talk." 
   
   "I said to my husband that, you know, the language was inappropriate. It's not acceptable. And I was surprised, because that is not the man that I know," she said. 
   
   "And as you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on -- it was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on," she said, referring to Trump and NBC's "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush. 
   
   She said they were engaged in "boy talk, and he was led on -- like, egged on -- from the host to say dirty and bad stuff." 
   
   She said she agrees with Michelle Obama's assertion that kissing or groping a woman without consent is sexual assault. 
   
   "But every assault should be taken care of in a court of law. And to accuse, no matter who it is, a man or a woman, without evidence is damaging and unfair," she said. 
   
   Melania Trump defended her husband's criticism on the campaign trail of his accusers' looks -- an implication that the women who have alleged his misconduct aren't attractive enough to sexually assault. 
   
   'I know he respects women' 
   
   "He's raw. He will say it as he feels it. So you know, I know he respects women. But he's defending himself because they're lies," she said. 
   
   She said she jokes that her husband at times behaves like an overgrown boy -- and that she saw his "Access Hollywood" remarks as emblematic of that. 
   
   "Sometimes I say I have two boys at home -- I have my young son and I have my husband. But I know how some men talk, and that's how I saw it, yes," she said. 
   
   She said she would keep their personal conversations private -- but that Trump apologized for his remarks on the tape. 
   
   "I accept his apology. I hope the American people will accept it as well. And it was many, many years ago. He's not the man that I know," she said. 
   
   Melania Trump called her husband "real" and "raw" -- and said because of his years as an entertainer, he faced an especially tough challenge transitioning into politics, because he has made decades' worth of controversial comments. 
   
   "It's very hard, especially for him -- when he decided to run for the presidency, because he did so many stuff in his life. He was on so many tapes, so many shows. And we knew that -- that, you know, tapes will come out, people won't want to go against him. 
   
   "But my husband is real. He's raw. He tells it like it is. He's kind. He's a gentleman. He supports everybody. He supports women. He encourages them to go to the highest level, to achieve their dreams. He employs many, many women," she said. 
   
   'He didn't say he did it' 
   
   She said she wouldn't describe what Trump said on the tape as sexual assault, even though in the video Trump appeared to be describing his own actions. 
   
   "No, that's not sexual assault," she said. "He didn't say he did it." 
   
   Melania Trump said she believes Trump in part because she's seen him deflect brazen advances from other women. 
   
   "I see many, many women coming to him and giving phone numbers and, you know, want(ing) to work for him -- inappropriate stuff from women. And they know he's married," she said. 
   
   "You've seen that?" Cooper asked. 
   
   "Oh yes, of course. It was in front of me," Trump said. "In front of me. And I've said, like, 'Why did you give your number to my husband?' " 
   
   Melania Trump reserved her strongest critique for the political press, which she says has yet to report an accurate story about her. 
   
   "I didn't expect media would be so dishonest and so mean. I didn't expect that," she said. "Also for me, from the beginning, I never had one correct story -- one honest story." 
   
   She backed her husband's claims that the election is being rigged in Hillary Clinton's favor, arguing that media bias is undercutting her husband. 
   
   "Well I see it how the media is portraying -- I see how they report things, and what they want to say and what they don't want to say," she said. 
   
   "They're going -- just for example, he makes a speech 45 minutes long, they take a sentence out, and they're going on and on about that sentence, nothing else," she said. "And he talks about the issues, and that's what American people want to hear, it's about issues, about jobs, about the future of our country, and that's what he wants to do. 
   
   She added: "He wants to secure the borders, he wants to secure America, he wants to bring jobs back, he wants to bring economy back, and he's very passionate about American people, because he knows he can do that. He's a worker, he's a fighter, he is, he's very passionate about it, and he will not give up, he will fight till the end, and he will fight for American people as he's fighting now for himself." 
   
   Melania Trump also made clear she doesn't want sympathy. 
   
   "I'm very strong. And people -- they don't really know me. People think and talk about me like, 'Oh, Melania, oh poor Melania,'" she said. 
   
   "Don't feel sorry for me. Don't feel sorry for me. I can handle everything," she added. ||||| The drama between Billy Bush and NBC News may finally be over. 
   
   TMZ reports that Bush and NBC have reached a financial agreement in his contract that officially ended his employment with the network. 
   
   Sources say that Bush is happy with the final number, but it will remain confidential. When he joined “TODAY” full time, he reportedly signed a $3.5 million per year contract for three years. So you get an idea of what the settlement could be. 
   
   RELATED: According to reports, Billy Bush is close to his exit from NBC and lawyers are determining a settlement amount 
   
   
   
   
   
   Bush reportedly felt like a “scapegoat” following a leaked tape that featured lewd comments he made with Donald Trump during a 2005 taping of “Access Hollywood.” He felt that his dismissal was simply for PR reasons. 
   
   According to the tabloid, staff at NBC was sent a final notice about Bush’s dismissal. 
   
   “While he was a new member of the ‘TODAY’ team, he was a valued colleague and longtime member of the broader NBC family. We wish success as he goes forward,” the memo read.
target: – Melania Trump has kept a low profile since the GOP convention, but she's suddenly taking a more aggressive role on behalf of her husband. In interviews with CNN and Fox News, the wife of Donald Trump said she has accepted his apology over the language he used in his recent hot mic scandal, suggested he was egged on by host Billy Bush, and characterized it as "boys' talk." As for the women accusing her husband of sexual abuse, "they don't have any facts." Some excerpts: "I said to my husband that, you know, the language was inappropriate. It's not acceptable. And I was surprised, because that is not the man that I know." (To Anderson Cooper of CNN.) "Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate. And he apologized to me. ... I accept his apology. And we are moving on." (To Ainsley Earhardt of Fox.) Her husband "was led on—like, egged on—from the host to say dirty and bad stuff." (CNN) She said she'd never heard her husband talk like that. "No, that's why I was surprised, because I said like I don't know that person that would talk that way, and that he would say that kind of stuff in private." (CNN) It's "boys' talk," she said. "The boys, the way they talk when they grow up and they want to sometimes show each other, 'Oh, this and that' and talking about the girls. But yes, I was surprised, of course." (CNN) On the tactic of dredging up Bill Clinton's past: “They're asking for it. They started,” she said. "They started from the beginning of the campaign putting my picture from modeling days." (To Fox News.) Nude images of Melania Trump appeared in the New York Post, and another surfaced in an ad by a super PAC backing Ted Cruz. (Billy Bush has been fired by NBC.)