Melania Trump Hitting Campaign Trail for First Solo Event

For most of the 2016 presidential campaign, Melania Trump has maintained a silently supportive role to the candidacy of her husband, Republican nominee Donald Trump.

The wife of the GOP nominee has opted to stay mostly on the sidelines of the campaign, citing her priorities as a mother to their son, Barron. And when she has stepped out on the campaign trail, she has typically maintained a non-speaking role by her husband’s side.

But on Thursday, with just five days until Election Day, Mrs. Trump is breaking from the norm to headline her first solo campaign event of the 2016 campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. She will be introduced by Karen Pence, the wife of her husband's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

It will also be her first speech since her address to the Republican National Convention this summer. That speech was quickly overshadowed by allegations that it had plagiarized certain lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 address to the Democratic National Convention, a charge for which a Trump aide later accepted fault.

Mrs. Trump is making her Thursday debut in the crucial Philadelphia suburbs, which often decide the outcome of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. Polling out of Pennsylvania last month showed Clinton in a comfortable lead in the state by over 6 points, but the Trump campaign is making a play for the state.

At the event in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, sources tell ABC News Mrs. Trump will talk about her family and her husband, aiming to tell "more of his heart."

Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has been crafting the speech along with Mrs. Trump, offered a preview of it in an interview on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday.

"She'll talk about her life here and her life in Slovenia where she grew up," Conway said. "And the love of America when she was growing up and how it was not enough to just know about America, but she wanted to be an American and she waited 10 years through the normal channels to immigrate."

Conway added, "She's written a beautiful speech and she's a wonderful person. I think people are very curious to hear what she has to say."

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from ABC News: Politics http://ift.tt/2eqAOB4

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