OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
6:05 PM – Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Former President Donald Trump led the way alongside the other 2024 Republican presidential contenders at the Iowa caucuses, while also holding back emotion during his victory speech.
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On Monday night, Trump thanked his family members and paid honor to his late mother-in-law who recently passed away during his victory speech after his win in Iowa.
Trump, 77, began mentioning his family members after winning, including Melania Trump’s mother Amalija Knavs, who passed away last week.
The 45th president expressed that Melania’s mother was “looking down from heaven” and “would be proud” of the historic accomplishment as he applauded his fellow rivals during his victory speech at the Iowa caucuses.
Just last week, on January 9th, Knavs passed away at 78-years-old. Her funeral is scheduled to take place in Florida this week following the former president’s attendance to the court to hear E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.
“I think most importantly, I want to thank my incredible wife, first lady, I’ll say former and maybe future, but more important than Melania, I want to thank her incredible, beautiful mother who passed away a few days ago,” Donald said, with a visible change in his expression. “And she’s up there, way up there. She’s looking down and she’s so proud of us. And I just want to say to Amalia, you are special, one of the most special people I’ve ever known. And that was a tough period of time for the family. But she’s amazing. She was amazing. So I just want to thank what she’s done for our family and her husband,” he added.
Melania also paid tribute to her late mother in a post on X.
Knavs is survived by her husband, Victor Knavs, who Trump also mentioned in his victory speech.
“They’re great people, great, great parents to all of us, really great parents,” the former president said.
Additionally, in his speech, Trump paid appreciation to his children, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump, along with his campaign administrators for the pivotal victory.
“I want to thank my family. Generally, they’ve worked so hard and they’ve taken so much abuse for being good people. I mean, good people. But Eric and Don, it really did. These two have been working so hard and you know, they have another job also. So they have to do it all,” Donald said.
“I want to thank everybody. This has been some period of time. And most importantly, we want to thank the great people of Iowa. Thank you. We love you all. What a turnout. What a crowd. And I really think this is time now for everybody, our country, to come together. We want to come together, whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat or liberal or conservative. If it would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems and straighten out all of the death and destruction that we’re witnessing, that’s practically never been like this. It’s just so important. And I want to make that a very big part of our message. We’re going to come together. It’s going to happen soon too,” he added.
On January 23rd, a primary will take place in New Hampshire between the former president, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Ryan Binkley.
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