Melania Trump defends husband's words about women as 'boy talk'

Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, took to the airwaves Monday to defend her husband over sexually aggressive language he used to describe women in a 2005 recording that recently became public.

It's the first time Melania Trump has spoken publicly since the recording emerged on Oct. 7, in which Donald Trump used vulgar language to describe women and said he could kiss and grope them without their consent because of his celebrity.

Saying her husband had been "egged on" by Billy Bush, the then-host of "Access Hollywood," Trump said she found the language offensive but dismissed it as "boy talk."

"I said to my husband that, you know, the language was inappropriate. It's not acceptable. And I was surprised, because that is not the man that I know," Trump told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an interview that was scheduled to air Monday evening.

Trump said her husband and Bush were engaged in "boy talk, and he was led on _ like, egged on _ from the host to say dirty and bad stuff."

Asked in a separate interview whether it was fair for the media or her husband to raise former President Bill Clinton's past, Trump responded that it was fair because her own past as a model has been raised.

"Well, if they bring up my past, why not?" she told Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt in an interview that is scheduled to air Tuesday morning.

"They're asking for it. They started. They started from the _ from the beginning of the campaign putting my _ my picture from modeling days," Trump said. "That was my modeling days, and I'm proud what I did. I worked very hard."

Trump seemed to be saying that the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had highlighted her modeling pictures. That does not appear to be true.

During the Republican primaries, a super PAC that opposed her husband circulated a nude picture of Melania Trump to voters in Utah. That effort called for the nomination of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

After the Republican National Convention, the New York Post also published 21-year-old nude pictures of Trump. But there has been no evidence that Democratic campaign operatives were involved.