Melania Trump will probably not be returning to the White House for the next four years with her husband, multiple sources told CNN this week, but rather will be splitting her time between Palm Beach, Florida, and New York City, where Barron is going to college.
For many observers it is unclear who might be more relieved by that decision: Melania, who famously did not love her life in DC the first time around, or the White House itself, where Trump’s wife once expressed her discontent by filling the halls with blood-red Christmas trees and destroying the historically beloved Rose Garden.
Melania’s apparent refusal to return to the White House for her second run as Flotus is a stunning break from American tradition. No other first lady in American history has simply opted to live alone in a Manhattan apartment instead of moving back into the East Wing, where she would have a full staff doting on her and the best possible security apparatus.
But the decision came as no surprise after her absence from the campaign trail this year, which was so glaring that when she did show up on election day in oversized sunglasses, Melania body double conspiracy theories quickly ran rampant.
She seemingly relished her freedom from the White House the first time around, as evidenced by her beaming smile upon landing in Palm Beach after Trump lost in 2020. And her apparent personal disdain for her husband, whose sexual misconduct allegations reportedly inspired her to renegotiate the conditions of her prenup before agreeing to move into the East Wing the first time around, has been likewise obvious for some time. (She reportedly quietly renegotiated the prenup again ahead of Trump’s second term, but this time without even agreeing to live in the same city as him.)
The latest news of Melania keeping her distance from the Beltway follows her rejection earlier this week of Jill Biden’s invitation to have tea at the White House. The invitation is part of a symbolic “changing of the guard” tradition that sitting and incoming first ladies do every four years to project a peaceful transition.
Melania did have a “tea and tour” with Michelle Obama in 2016, where they discussed raising children in the White House. But this time around, the incoming Flotus is reportedly angry with the Bidens over the federal investigation into Trump holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“She ain’t going,” a source familiar with Melania’s decision told the New York Post. “Jill Biden’s husband authorized the FBI snooping through her underwear drawer. The Bidens are disgusting.”
Melania’s team was less forthcoming about her motivations behind the snub.
“Her husband’s return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success,” her office said in a statement.
In losing Melania from the White House and basically all Flotus traditions, America may bid farewell to a first lady who seemed almost to revel in her discomfort in the role. On a trip to visit migrant children being held in cages at the border, she wore a $39 jacket with the words “I really don’t care, do u?” emblazoned across her back. In a secretly recorded conversation with her former aide Stephanie Wolkoff in 2018, she complained in explicit terms about having to decorate the White House for Christmas.
“I’m working like a – my ass off at Christmas stuff,” she says in the audio. “You know, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration?”
There is much speculation if Melania even wanted her husband to win re-election this time around, despite how winning a return to the White House greatly improved their economic outlook as a couple and his chances of avoiding prison time.
A source told People magazine in 2021 that Trump winning a second term would be “the worst-case scenario” for Melania, and her clear distance from her husband’s political career has only grown since the violent end to his first term in office.
Melania was even paid six figures to make a rare appearance at one of Trump’s fundraisers in September. She also passionately defended abortion rights in her new memoir, just a month before the election, which could be interpreted either as an attempt to distance herself from her husband’s legacy or to help him revamp his image with women ahead of election day. It also could just be a ploy to sell books.
Regardless of Melania’s motivations, it’s clear that the US will witness a new era of a first lady unconcerned with traditional optics and unconstrained by expectations of what an American president’s wife is supposed to be and do.
Contrarians might even be inclined to celebrate it as a feminist achievement, if Melania hadn’t served as an accomplice all these years – reluctantly or not – to a president whose appointments to the US supreme court saw a huge loss in women’s reproductive rights.
