“I grew up under communism, and I didn’t actually lack anything.” Melania Trump’s testimony on Fox News raises questions.
First Lady Melania Trump spoke Wednesday morning with enthusiasm about her childhood under communism in Slovenia, at a time when her husband, the U.S. President, and the network she was invited to, Fox News, constantly attack communism.
“I grew up under communism and, in fact, I didn’t lack anything,” Melania Trump, the wife of the U.S. President, said Wednesday for Fox News Business.
“I feel like I had a very beautiful childhood, and my parents gave me a beautiful childhood with my family,” she said, according to Mediaite.
She was responding to a question from the hosts about how Eastern Europeans perceive the idea of freedom.
“Why is it that Eastern Europeans, like yourself, fully understand the gift of freedom better than Western Europeans — and sometimes better than Americans? What does that have to do with the way you were raised?” one of the Fox News hosts asked.
“Yes, there are certain things you have to be aware of and you have to be careful about what you do – it’s not as free as it is here in the United States. Times have changed now, but when I was little, it wasn’t like that,” the First Lady insisted.
Born in 1970 under communism
Melania Trump, Newsweek writes, grew up in socialist Yugoslavia, a communist-led federation that was formed after World War II. Slovenia was one of the six republics of Yugoslavia, along with Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.
Yugoslavia was led by communist leader Josip Broz Tito, but its system differed from the Soviet model. After Tito broke with Joseph Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia followed its own form of socialism.
Slovenia was the most economically developed of Yugoslavia’s republics. After Tito’s death in 1980, economic and political tensions increased, and Slovenia moved toward multiparty democracy and independence.
Slovenia held its first multiparty elections in 1990 and declared its independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991. Melania, born in 1970, would have spent her childhood and adolescence under Yugoslavia’s communist system, before Slovenia became an independent country.
Trump’s attacks on communism
Melania Trump’s comments about communism stood out, according to Mediaite and Newsweek, given the political context in the U.S.
President Donald Trump and Fox News have constantly criticized communism. They have intensified this approach amid the rise of socialist Democrats within the party that is now in opposition in the U.S.
Trump has repeatedly used the word “communist” when criticizing Democrats and some politicians associated with the left-wing movement. “They call themselves democratic socialists, but in fact, they are communists,” he said.
“Communism is a loser and will remain so forever,” Trump said in a speech given on July 4th.
“Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields all over the world just for this threat to rear its ugly head again right here in America. We will not allow that to happen,” he assured.
