Melania Trump likely won’t return to the White House in the next four years with her husband, multiple sources say told CNN this week, but she will split her time between Palm Beach, FloridaAnd New York Citywhere Barron goes to college.
For many observers, it is difficult to know who might be most relieved by this decision: Melania, who, as we know, I didn’t like his life in Washington for the first time, or in the White House itself, where Trump’s wife once expressed her displeasure by filling the corridors with blood red christmas trees And destroy the historically appreciated rose garden.
Melania’s apparent refusal to return to the White House for her second term as Flotus constitutes a stunning break 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 she would have a full staff caring for her and the best equipment possible security.
But the move comes as no surprise after her absence from the campaign trail this year, so conspicuous as when she did introduce yourself on election day with oversized sunglasses, Melania double body Conspiracy theories spread quickly.
She apparently enjoyed her freedom from the White House the first time around, as evidenced by her radiant smile upon landing in Palm Beach after Trump’s defeat in 2020. And his apparent personal personality disdain for her husband, whose allegations of sexual misconduct allegedly prompted her to renegotiate The terms of her prenup before agreeing to move into the East Wing for the first time have also been evident for some time. (She would have calmly renegotiated the prenup again before Trump’s second term, but this time without even agreeing to live in the same city as him.)
The latest news that Melania is keeping her distance from the Beltway follows her rejection earlier this week of Jill Biden’s invitation to 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 plan a peaceful transition.
Melanie did it have a “tea and visit” with Michelle Obama in 2016, where they discussed raising children at the White House. But this time around, the new Flotus is reportedly angry with the Bidens over the federal investigation into Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
‘She’s not going,’ source close to Melania’s decision said THE New York Post. “Jill Biden’s husband allowed the FBI to snoop through his underwear drawer. The Bidens are disgusting.
Melania’s team was less open about their motivations behind this snub.
“Her husband’s return to the Oval Office to begin the transition process is encouraging and she wishes him every success,” her office said in a statement.
In losing Melania from the White House and virtually all Flotus traditions, America could bid farewell to a first lady who seemed almost to revel in her discomfort in the role. On a trip to visit migrant children held in cages at the border, she wore a $39 jacket with the words “I don’t care, do I?” engraved on his back. In a secret recording conversation along with her former aide Stephanie Wolkoff in 2018, she complained in explicit terms about having to decorate the White House for Christmas.
“I work like crazy on Christmas stuff,” she says in the audio. “You know, who cares about Christmas stuff and decorations?”
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There is much speculation whether Melania even wanted her husband to be re-elected this time around, even though his return to the White House has greatly improved their economic prospects as a couple and his chances of avoiding prison.
A source told People magazine in 2021 that Trump winning a second term would be “the worst case scenario” for Melania, and her obvious distance from her husband’s political career has only grown since the violent end of his first term .
Melania even got paid six digits making a rare appearance at one of Trump’s fundraisers in September. She too defended with passion 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 as an attempt to help her restore her image among women before election day. It could also just be a ploy to sell books.
Whatever Melania’s motivations, it is clear that the United States will experience a new era of a first lady unconcerned with traditional optics and free from the expectations of what a U.S. president’s wife is expected to be and do. .
Conservatives might even be inclined to celebrate it as a feminist achievement, if Melania hadn’t been complicit all these years – begrudgingly or not – with a president whose appointments to the United States Supreme Court led to a enormous loss of women’s reproductive rights.