Former first lady Melania Trump, the wife of former President Donald Trump, revealed new details about her experience during the George Floyd protests that occurred during in 2020, describing a moment of fear as demonstrators approached the White House.
In a video clip on Sunday promoting her upcoming memoir Melania on X, formerly Twitter, Melania Trump recounted the tense atmosphere inside the executive residence as protests intensified outside.
“The loud knocking on the door sent a jolt through my body,” she said in the video. “The Secret Service agent told me I needed to move. Safety was paramount, not just for me but for the president and all of the residents in the White House. The violent protests across the country had finally reached Pennsylvania Avenue.”
The New York Times first reported that sources familiar with the events of May 29, 2020, then-President Trump, along with Melania and their son Barron, were briefly moved to the White House’s underground bunker as a precautionary measure. The decision to relocate the First Family came as protesters gathered outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, engaging in confrontations with Secret Service officers that at times became physical.
Newsweek has contacted Melania Trump’s press contact via email on Sunday for comment.
Former first lady Melania Trump is seen on September 3, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Former President Donald Trump’s wife revealed new details about her experience during the George Floyd protests that occurred during in 2020, describing a moment of fear as demonstrators approached the White House.
Getty Images/Drew Angerer
The protests were sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed Black man, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin during an arrest on May 26, 2020. Bystander video showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, ignoring Floyd’s pleas that he couldn’t breathe.
The demonstrations outside the White House, which began peacefully, escalated throughout the evening as rioters attempted to breach security barriers and threw objects at law enforcement personnel. Secret Service agents reportedly sustained minor injuries and resorted to using pepper spray to disperse the crowd at one point.
The movement quickly spread nationwide and internationally, with protests emerging in over 2,000 cities and towns across more than 60 countries. Estimates suggest that between 15 to 26 million people participated in the demonstrations in the United States, making it the largest protest movement in U.S. history. While the majority of protests were peaceful, some cities experienced riots, looting, and violent confrontations between protesters, counter-protesters, and law enforcement.
By early June 2020, at least 200 cities in the U.S. had imposed curfews, and over 30 states and Washington, D.C. had activated more than 96,000 National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Infantry Regiment service members. This deployment, combined with preexisting mobilizations related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters, constituted the largest military operation other than war in U.S. history.
In the aftermath of the protests, President Trump took to social media to praise the Secret Service for their handling of the situation. He also criticized Washington D.C.’s Mayor Muriel Bowser, claiming she did not allow local police to assist in managing the demonstrations—an assertion later disputed by Secret Service statements confirming the presence of D.C. police at the scene.
The following day, speaking at NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, President Trump addressed the nationwide protests more directly. While expressing support for “justice and peace,” he also condemned acts of looting and violence, attributing them to “Antifa and the radical left” without providing evidence for these claims.
The former first lady’s promotion of her upcoming memoir has not been limited to recounting events from 2020. In a recent video posted to social media, she addressed the FBI’s 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ opulent Florida estate, regarding classified documents. Speaking over images of Mar-a-Lago with text from the Fourth Amendment superimposed, Melania stated, “I never imagined my privacy would be invaded by the government here in America.”
Her comments on the FBI‘s raid echo concerns previously expressed by her husband. In the clip posted to X, she described the raid as not just her story but “a warning to all Americans, a reminder that our freedom and rights must be respected.”
This approach to promoting her book by addressing controversial topics has become a pattern for Melania who previously shared a video discussing a failed assassination attempt on her husband during a Pennsylvania campaign rally.
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