The marriage between former President and former First Lady Donald and Melania Trump has been closely scrutinized and the subject of mockery and rumors for many years, and that trend has continued following the July 13 assassination attempt against the former president.

Trump revealed in an interview this week that his wife was so traumatized by what occurred that she was initially unable to speak to him about it, which he took as evidence that "she likes me," according to The Independent.

Unfortunately, Trump's remarks and the incident in general only served to prompt his haters to make horrible statements and accusations about their relationship, including that Melania was involved with or supportive of the effort to take his life.

What Trump said about Melania's reaction

According to Mediaite, former President Trump was asked in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that aired on Monday about the former first lady's reaction to the attempted assassination of him by a gunman at a Pennsylvania rally that injured his ear with a near-miss bullet and left one rally-goer dead and two others wounded.

"She was watching live. It was all over the place. It was on television. It was on your network. But it was all over the place. And she was watching," he replied. "I asked her that. I mean, I wasn’t there. I was on the ground. And when the world started to -- like, you could talk to people, I said: 'So what was your feeling?' And she was -- she can’t really even talk about it."

"Which is OK, because that means she likes me. Or she loves me," he continued. "I mean, let’s say she could talk about it freely. That wouldn’t be -- I’m not so sure which is better. But she either likes or loves me. And that’s nice."

"But I will say this. Look, she was -- when I went down, she thought the worst had happened, because I went down and I grabbed my [ear]. And I saw it was -- my hand was loaded up with blood. You see it in slow motion, instant replay," Trump added. "We had hundreds of press there. So this was covered live. They would have had instant replay and everything else, which they already do in this, but supposing the worst happened."

In those remarks, it seems clear to many that the former President Trump was stating that because of his wife's deep love for him and horror over what occurred, she was unable to fully express, at least initially, how traumatized she was by the near-fatal attempt on his life.

Hate-filled mockery for Trump and his wife

Unfortunately, not everybody saw it that way, including The Independent, which characterized Trump's comments about his wife's reaction as a "joke" at her expense.

That interpretation of what was said was perhaps the least offensive offered up by Trump's haters, however, as evidenced by the comments section of Newsweek's coverage of what the former president said in that Fox News interview.

A prevailing theme in those comments was that the former first lady was unable to speak about the assassination attempt because of her disappointment that the shooter had failed in his mission, as well as that Trump was simply lying about the entire interaction with his wife.

Likewise, OK Magazine shared a few of the worst and most insulting reactions to Trump's commentary about Melania that appeared on social media, including remarks that minimized the tragedy of what occurred or cast dark aspersions on the status of their marriage.

"Donald Trump had to pay extra for Melania to be worried and scared for him after he got the cut on his ear," one user said while another claimed, "Her nightmare was almost over. Of course she's pissed."

"This is a weird marriage. She likes me because I was shot? Weirdest," a third commenter stated while yet another speculated, "When you hire a sniper and realize you are going to have to do the job yourself …"