International Reaction
London’s Daily Telegraph apologized to first lady Melania Trump on Saturday and said it had agreed to pay her “substantial damages” for publishing false statements regarding her family and her modeling career.
It was at least the third time that the first lady has successfully sued publications or online blogs over defamatory articles.
“We apologize unreservedly to The First Lady and her family for any embarrassment caused by our publication of these allegations,” the newspaper wrote Saturday. “As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs. Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs.”
The claims appeared last week in a cover story in its Saturday magazine entitled “The mystery of Melania.”
The conservative British newspaper said the article should not have made the claim that Melania Trump was struggling in her modeling career before she met Donald Trump nor that she had advanced in her career due to his help.
Melania Trump: First lady rings in 2019 with a sparkly selfie
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The presidential family headed to Bedminster, N.J. retreat on June 29, 2018. First lady Melania Trump, wearing flowered jeans and yellow heels, was accompanied by son Barron and her mother, Amalija Knavs, with daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in the background, board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.President Trump and first lady Melania Trump spent part of their long weekend in Florida, staring Feb. 16, 2018, visiting Broward Health North hospital in Pompano Beach, Fla., following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., three days earlier. They were accompanied by Dr. Igor Nichiporenko, left, when they met with medical staff.First lady Melania Trump wore a bright red coat by Calvin Klein for her cookie-making visit to the Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health, where she met Amber Negrete, 8, right seated, Annie Ribas, 9, left, and Katherine Faughn, 6, center seated.The first family’s first weekend at Camp David started on June 17, 2017. Mrs. Trump chose an embroidered pinstripe white dress by Gabriela Hearst, plus flats, for the occasion, according to White House Wardrobe on Twitter. Their son, Barron, 11, was wearing soccer gear, and President Trump, who’s rarely seen in anything but a suit, had ditched his tie. Melania’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, also went along on the ride to the rustic presidential refuge about 70 miles from the White House in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.
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“We accept that Mrs. Trump was a successful professional model in her own right before she met her husband and obtained her own modeling work without his assistance, ” the Telegraph said.
The newspaper also said she did not leave her design and architecture course at her university because of anything to do with completing her exam, as alleged in the article, “but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model.”
The apology also stated that the future first lady met Trump in 1998, not in 1996, as it had published, and also wrongly claimed that her mother, father and sister had relocated to New York in 2005 to live in buildings owned by Trump. “They did not,” the newspaper said.
The Telegraph also cleaned up a couple of additional points:
• “Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family. “
• “The claim that Mrs. Trump cried on election night is also false.”
In 2017, Melania Trump’s lawyer said she settled a defamation suit for a “substantial sum” against a Maryland blogger who wrote she once worked as an escort. The blogger, Webster Tarpley, also issued a statement in which he said that his article was “replete with false and defamatory statements about her,” Variety reported.
That same year, the Daily Mail and Mail Online agreed to pay significant damages, estimated to be under $3 million, to settle a libel claim.
A statement agreed upon by both parties said a double-spread newspaper article and an online posting about her by the Mail included “false and defamatory claims about [Mrs Trump] which questioned the nature of her work as a professional model and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modeling,” according to The Guardian.
The Mail also published an apology to the first lady “for any distress that our publication caused her.”
