During a Fox News interview, former First Lady Melania Trump explained that she has faced “cancel culture” from institutions that have refused her charitable donations because she is married to former President Donald Trump.
Melania Trump highlighted the shocking fact that people who are suffering were being denied donations because the institutions care more about politics than the lives of the people they are supposed to be helping. According to the former first lady, the refusal came from a university that has a program offering scholarships to foster children.
“Because of the board directors, they called back, they found out that it was me [donating the money]. They didn’t…they said, ‘We cannot go on.’ It was very, very sad. Because, who suffered? They were children from foster communities. They didn’t have a scholarship that somebody would provide for them. They [the university] didn’t want to do business with me because of political affiliation, my political beliefs. And, that…was one of the ‘canceling’ projects,” she said, referring to the ongoing trend of cancel culture.
Melania Trump: "'Cancel culture' trend is still going on." pic.twitter.com/DNOXJFRcA1
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 7, 2024
This is not the first time that one of Melania Trump’s donations was rejected because of who she is married to. In a February 2022 report, the New York Times confirmed that an Oklahoma school had rejected a financial gift from the former first lady.
The report only identified the school as “a computer science school founded in Silicon Valley with a campus in Oklahoma” — but the campus was later revealed to be the Holberton School, an education company based in San Francisco that trains people in computer science.
Holberton’s chief executive, Julien Barbier, issued a statement about the donation that did not provide any explanation for the rejection, only confirming that Melania Trump had indeed tried to donate to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, campus.
“We were approached about a scholarship by her team but never reached an agreement on the logistics of the scholarship,” Barbier said at the time, noting that he had nothing further to add to his statement.
Melania Trump has faced a lot of backlash and discrimination for being married to Donald Trump in the years since be announced his first presidential campaign, especially while she was serving as first lady. As Townhall previously reported, the discrimination extended to media outlets like Vogue — which repeatedly refused to put Melania, a successful professional model, on the cover despite promoting both Jill Biden and Michelle Obama, both of whom had objectively less fashion sense than Melania.
Vogue just gave Jill Biden another magazine cover while snubbing the hottest woman to ever enter the White House. Melania is a bombshell. pic.twitter.com/hNDbz5o7lS
— Brittany Martinez (@BritMartinez) July 1, 2024
