Sources told CNN this week that Melania Trump probably won’t return to the White House with her husband for the next four years, splitting their time between Palm Beach, Fla., and New York City, where Barron is scheduled to visit. We’ll probably be spending our time splitting up. College.
For many observers, it is unclear who will be more reassured by this decision. First lady Melania Trump famously didn’t love life in Washington, D.C. from the start, and the very White House where President Trump’s wife once expressed her dissatisfaction by filling the hallways with blood. -Destroy the red Christmas tree and the historically beloved Rose Garden.
First Lady Melania Trump’s apparent refusal to return to the White House for a second run as a FLOTUS is a stunning departure from American tradition. No other first lady in American history has simply chosen to live alone in a Manhattan apartment instead of returning to the East Wing, where her entire staff loves her and she has the highest security possible. .
But the decision comes as no surprise as first lady Melania Trump’s absence from campaigning this year was so conspicuous that theories of a double conspiracy quickly spread when she appeared on Election Day wearing oversized sunglasses. There wasn’t.
After President Trump’s defeat in 2020, she appeared to be enjoying her freedom from the White House for the first time, as evidenced by her wide smile as she landed in Palm Beach. Her apparent personal disdain for her husband also reportedly prompted her to renegotiate his allegations of sexual misconduct. Her prenuptial terms were likewise clear for some time before agreeing to move into the East Wing for the first time. (She reportedly quietly renegotiated the prenup again ahead of President Trump’s second term, but this time she wouldn’t even agree to live in the same city as him.)
The latest news that Melania Trump is distancing herself from the Beltway comes after she declined Jill Biden’s invitation to tea at the White House earlier this week. The invitation is part of the tradition of the symbolic Changing of the Guard ceremony, held every four years between the current and incoming first lady to ensure a peaceful transition of power.
First lady Melania Obama had a “tea and tour” with Michelle Obama in 2016, where they discussed raising children in the White House. But this time, the incoming Flotas is reportedly angry with the Bidens over the federal investigation into President Trump, who is keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“She’s not going,” a source familiar with Melania’s decision told the New York Post. “Jill Biden’s husband allowed the FBI to look into her underwear drawer. The Bidens are disgusted.”
Melania’s team was less than forthcoming about her motives behind the disdain.
“We are encouraged that my husband has returned to the Oval Office to begin the transition process, and we wish him great success,” her husband’s office said in a statement.
In losing Melania from the White House and basically all of the FLOTUS tradition, America may be saying goodbye to a first lady who almost seemed to relish the discomfort of the role. On a trip to visit migrant children held in cages at the border, she wore a $39 jacket with the words “You really don’t care, do you?” Her entire back is decorated. In a secretly recorded conversation with former aide Stephanie Wolkoff in 2018, she complained in no uncertain terms about having to decorate the White House for Christmas.
“I’ve been kind of busy with Christmas stuff,” she said in the audio. “Who cares about Christmas stuff and decorations?”
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Melania Trump once again wanted her husband re-elected, even though winning a return to the White House greatly improved their financial prospects as a couple and greatly increased his chances of avoiding a prison sentence. There is much speculation as to whether or not.
A source told People magazine in 2021 that Trump winning a second term would be a “worst-case scenario” for Melania. Melania’s apparent distance from her husband’s political career has only deepened since the violent end of the president’s first term, she said.
First lady Melania even received a six-figure payout for an unusual appearance at a Trump fundraiser in September. She also passionately defended abortion rights in a new memoir just a month before the election, which could be seen as an attempt to distance herself from her husband’s legacy, or perhaps even more so in the run-up to voting day. This could be interpreted as an attempt to help revamp the image of women. It could also just be a ploy to sell books.
Whatever Melania Trump’s motives may be, it is clear that the United States is witnessing a new era of first ladies unconcerned with traditional optics and unconstrained by expectations of what the wife of a U.S. president should be and do. It’s obvious.
If first lady Melania hadn’t been an accomplice, unwilling or not, for years, to the president whose appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court led to major erosion of women’s reproductive rights, contrarians may even be inclined to celebrate it as a feminist achievement.
