Melania Trump says she was shaken by the protests against George Floyd

Former first lady Melania Trump, wife of former President Donald Trump, has revealed new details about her experience during the George Floyd protests that took place in 2020, describing a moment of fear as demonstrators approached the White House.

In a music video released Sunday to promote his upcoming memoir Melanie On X, formerly Twitter, Melania Trump recounted the tense atmosphere inside the executive residence as protests intensified outside.

“The loud banging on the door sent a jolt through my entire body,” she said in the video. “The Secret Service agent told me I had to move. Safety was paramount, not just for me, but for the president and everyone in the White House. The violent protests across the country had finally reached Pennsylvania Avenue.”

The New York Times According to sources familiar with the events of May 29, 2020, President Trump, Melania Trump, and their son Barron were briefly moved to the White House underground bunker as a precautionary measure. The decision to relocate the First Family came as protesters gathered outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, engaging in confrontations with Secret Service agents that sometimes turned physical.

Newsweek reached out to Melania Trump’s press contact via email Sunday for comment.

The protests were sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin during an arrest on May 26, 2020. A bystander’s video showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, ignoring Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe.

The protests outside the White House, which began peacefully, escalated throughout the evening, with rioters attempting to breach security barriers and throwing objects at law enforcement. Secret Service agents reportedly suffered minor injuries and used tear gas to disperse the crowd at one point.

The movement quickly spread nationally and internationally, with protests taking place in more than 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries. An estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in the protests in the United States, making it the largest protest movement in the country’s history. While the majority of protests were peaceful, some cities saw riots, looting, and violent clashes between protesters, counter-protesters, and law enforcement.

By early June 2020, at least 200 cities across the United States had imposed curfews, and more than 30 states and Washington, D.C., had mobilized more than 96,000 members of the National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and 3rd Infantry Regiment. This deployment, combined with pre-existing mobilizations related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters, constituted the largest non-war military operation in U.S. history.

In the aftermath of the protests, President Trump praised the Secret Service on social media for its handling of the situation. He also criticized Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, saying she had not allowed local police to participate in managing the protests, a claim later disputed by Secret Service statements confirming the presence of D.C. police at the scene.

The next day, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, President Trump spoke more directly about the protests that have taken place across the country. While expressing support for “justice and peace,” he also condemned the acts of looting and violence, attributing them to “Antifa and the radical left” without providing evidence to support his claims.

The former first lady’s promotion of her upcoming memoir hasn’t been limited to recounting events from 2020. In a recent video posted to social media, she discussed the 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ lavish Florida estate, over classified documents. Speaking over footage of Mar-a-Lago with Fourth Amendment text superimposed, Melania said, “I never imagined that my privacy would be invaded by the government here in America.”

Her comments about the FBI raid echo concerns previously expressed by her husband. In the video posted to X, she describes the raid as not just her story but “a warning to all Americans, a reminder that our freedom and our rights must be respected.”

This approach to promoting her book by tackling controversial topics has become a pattern for Melania, who previously shared a video discussing a failed assassination attempt on her husband at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.