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Melania Trump said she believes her husband Donald Trump was "egged on" in making his lewd comments about women in a now-infamous 2005 tape, remarks she called "inappropriate" but classified as "boy talk."

"I said to my husband that the language is inappropriate, it is not acceptable," Mrs. Trump said in an interview with CNN. "I was surprised because that is not the man that I know." She added: "I heard many different stuff—boys talk. 'Oh, this and that' and talking about the girls. But yes, I was surprised, of course."

She also accused the media of being "very dishonest" and said she wasn't surprised the tape came out, days before the second presidential debate and a few weeks before Election Day.

"They want to influence the American people how to vote and they are influencing in the wrong way," she said.

The interviews mark her first televised comments since a video surfaced on Oct. 7 of Mr. Trump bragging about using his star status to make sexual advances and about his efforts to have sex with a married woman. Mr. Trump has apologized for the comments and called them locker-room talk and not describing his actual behavior. Since the tape aired, Mr. Trump has been hit with a series of accusations from women claiming he groped or kissed them, allegations he has denied. Fox News also interviewed Mrs. Trump. It aired excerpts of the interview in the 5 p.m. hour and will air the full interview Tuesday morning.

As for the allegations of sexual assault, Mrs. Trump told CNN that she didn't believe them, and accused the "opposition" for being involved. She didn't mention Mr. Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton, by name.

"I believe my husband. I believe my husband," she said. "This was all organized from the opposition. With the details that they go—did they ever check the background of these women? They don't have any facts."

Focused on the tape, Mrs. Trump said she felt some of her husband's comments were encouraged by Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood, who was accompanying Mr. Trump to a taping of a soap-opera episode. Mr. Bush has apologized for his comments in the tape, saying he was "embarrassed and ashamed."

"As you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on," Mrs. Trump told CNN, referring to first portion of the tape, when the most controversial comments were made. "It was only a mic. I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on." She added that she believed her husband and Mr. Bush were engaged in "kind of, boy talk, and he was led on—like, egged on—from the host to say dirty and bad stuff."

Mrs. Trump also said she believes former president Bill Clinton's infidelities and past allegations are fair game in the presidential race between her husband and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump's campaign invited women who had accused Mr. Clinton of sexual assault to the second presidential debate on Oct. 9 and staged a media event before the debate featuring the women.

"Well if they bring up my past, why not?" Mrs. Trump said in the Fox News interview. "They're asking for it. They started it, they started it from the beginning of the campaign—putting my picture from modeling days as 'you want that to be a first lady?' That was my modeling days and I'm proud what I did. I worked very hard."

It wasn't clear which criticisms Mrs. Trump was referring to. In one incident from the primary campaign earlier this year, a Republican, anti-Trump super PAC used a nude photo of Melania Trump from a GQ magazine photo shoot, for an ad, with text that said: "Meet Melania Trump, your next first lady. Or you could vote for Ted Cruz on Tuesday." In response, Mr. Trump threatened to "spill the beans" on Sen. Cruz's wife and retweeted an unflattering image of Heidi Cruz juxtaposed next to Mrs. Trump.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign wasn't involved in that exchange.

Should she become the next first lady, Mrs. Trump told CNN that she would focus on social media and helping children navigate the online world.

"We need to guide them and teach them about social media," Mrs. Trump said, pointing to negativity on social networks. "I see more and more children being hurt by it."

Write to Natalie Andrews at Natalie.Andrews@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 17, 2016 21:55 ET (01:55 GMT)

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