That Melania Trump is just full of surprises, ain’t she? The incoming First Lady made it clear she wasn’t going to meet current First Lady Jill Biden, breaking with decades of White House tradition. Now it appears she won’t be moving into the White House over these next four years. She might pop in every now and again, but apparently, that’s going to be it.
While that’s another White House tradition shattered, this isn’t unusual for the privacy-loving Melania, who was practically invisible during Donald Trump’s previous term.
The Daily Beast reports that there are ongoing discussions about where the 52-year-old will reside during Donald Trump’s second term, but according to sources cited by CNN Wednesday, she is “unlikely to move to Washington full time in her second go-round as first lady.”
So while Melania will mostly absent in Washington, CNN also reported she’s still expected to show up to major events like state dinners and is also expected to have her own “platform and priorities as first lady.”
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Of course, rumors about Melania’s potential living situation have sprouted like weeds over the past few months. A few insiders told Axios in June that she’ll likely live elsewhere as her husband holds forth, perhaps at Mar-a-Lago, where her golf-a-holic husband is expected to spend much of his time, or perhaps in Manhattan, where 18-year Barron is attending New York University.
In a September interview with Fox News in September, Melania said she doesn’t think of herself as an empty nester, and noted that Barron is living in Trump Tower. And that’s where, according to CNN sources, Melania is expected to spend a “significant amount of time.”
Trump doesn’t seem particularly bothered by his wife’s absence, one source told the network, adding there “is no internal backlash among the president-elect’s team.” Even though Melania largely avoided the campaign trail, except when she appeared at the RNC and also appeared at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, she’s been “a constant voice in her husband’s ear” to offer advice and give him pep talks.
So Melania won’t be completely absent and will fulfill at least some of her duties as first lady. Semafor noted Monday that she has chosen Goldman Sachs’ John Rogers to help her staff her East Wing team before the January 20th inauguration gets underway.
In the run-up to Election Day, she told Fox News that she wasn’t worried about a second term as first lady because her first round taught her so much.
“I’m not anxious because this time is different,” she said. “I have much more experience and much more knowledge. I was in the White House before. When you go in, you know exactly what to expect.”
Maybe that means she’ll be even more experienced at grifting than she was before. I mean since she learned so much. And at the very least this means we’ll know what to expect too.
That doesn’t mean we’re happy about it.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery.
