Marla Maples, ex-wife of Donald Trump, said she's ready, able and willing to help the former president return to the White House.
Maples, who shares daughter Tiffany with Trump, has spent much of the past eight years out of the limelight.
"I'm ready. I am available if needed and I'm not sitting back anymore," Maples, 60, told The Standard. "I want to step out more, share more and not be afraid of positive or negative outcomes that come from speaking out."
With sources having suggested Maples is ambitious enough to take on the vice presidency, a reporter from The Standard asked if she would accept second place on the 2024 GOP ticket.
"Someone would have to ask my ex-husband about that," she said with a laugh, but quickly added: "I'm open. I'm open to whatever way that I can serve. Right now everyone [in the Trump family] is just seeing how we can help."
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is expected to capture the nomination officially at the July 15-18 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Although Democrats have been more than eager to call Trump "a convicted felon" after he was found guilty of falsifying documents to hide payment to an adult film star before the 2016 election, Maples strongly defends her ex-husband.
"They love these little sexy stories," she said in The Standard's story Tuesday. "We have a country that is failing. Our cities are not protected. How do we make people feel safe again? That's more important than having these lawsuits that are not affecting any of us today."
Maples also said she doubts E. Jean Carroll's claim that Trump sexually attacked her in 1996. A jury last year found the former president liable for sexually abusing Carroll.
"I do know my daughter's father well enough to know that he's never had to push himself on another person," she said. "He's always had women throw themselves on him instead. I don't believe there was a crime done."
The alleged Carroll-Trump incident took place when Maples and the former president were married.
"Anything from the past I've forgiven," Maples told The Standard. "That is a conversation that Donald and I have had: forgiving each other. Marriages are challenging, especially when you play them out in the media."
Maples blames the mainstream media for hiding rising crime rates in U.S. cities, specifically that by "gangs that had come up off the southern border."
"It's time to wake up to a higher truth, and to not believe everything that is shown to us in the news," she said.
Maples learned what the mainstream media could do when she began dating Trump.
"I had no idea what I was stepping into. I watched the lies. It was heartbreaking to me. I would find myself just crying," she said. "I saw first hand what really could be twisted."
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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