Despite Donald Trump’s post-election promise that Melania Trump would be an “active” first lady, his wife is actually being true to herself, which means not playing the role of traditional first lady and not spending much time in the White House or with her husband, apparently.
“That isn’t who she is,” a political source has told People, to explain Melania Trump’s absence from public view during her husband’s first month office. After attending Trump’s inauguration, she accompanied him to disaster-stricken areas in North Carolina and California on Jan. 24. Since then, her absence, except at the White House Governor’s Ball over the weekend, “should not come as a surprise” because she has “her own ideas on what she wants to do,” the source said.
To be fair, Trump did say in his interview after being named Time Person of the Year that his wife of 20 years would only be active “when she needs to be.”
A social source told People that Melania has stayed at both Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida and at the White House over the past month, but she hasn’t spent “meaningful time” at the White House. She’s mainly been there to film scenes for her upcoming Amazon Prime Video documentary with controversial, “canceled” Hollywood director Bret Ratner, according to People The documenary is supposed cover her return to the White House to serve as first lady for a second time. A release date has not been set.
“Melania has been busy shooting her documentary and that has taken place in several locations, including the White House,” a political source based in Florida told People.
But even at Mar-a-Lago, the “habitually aloof” Melania Trump “keeps to herself” in her private quarters and only accompanies her husband to dinner there “on occasion,” both People and the Daily Beast reported.
With an apparent hostess vacuum at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, has filled a void, according to the Daily Beast. With Melania Trump “habitually missing in action” at events, Maples, the mother of Trump’s daughter, Tiffany Trump, has “cultivated a role of her own as a Mar-a-Lago mainstay and as one of the most public-facing cheerleaders” of Trump’s administration, the Daily Beast said.
In fact, Maples has been leaning into her Christian faith to advocate for spirituality and wellness and to publicly lobby for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be confirmed as Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, according to the Daily Beast.
Meanwhile, Melania Trump told Fox and Friends last month that she would try to revive her “Be Best” initiative, which she originally launched during her husband’s first term as an “awareness campaign” to help children combat online bullying and the opioid epidemic.
But it’s well known that Melania Trump wasn’t that fond of Washington D.C.’s political and social scene during her first stint as first lady from 2017 to 2021.
“She clearly hated being in Washington,” Kate Andersen Brower, the author of several books about the White House, told Axios in June.
Brewer was among biographers and other Melania Trump watchers who have said that the former model from Slovenia “has a mind of her own” when it comes to her approach to official duties or to living in the White House. After Trump’s re-election, these experts said that they didn’t expect to see much of Melania Trump in Washington D.C during her husband’s second term. She instead would divide her time between Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower in New York City, they said.
In fact, the experts predicted that she would most likely spend most of her time in New York City because her son, Barron, is a freshman at New York University and lives in Trump Tower. Melania Trump seemed to echo that view in an interview with Fox News in September, when she said: “I could not say I’m an empty nester.”