A most sensitive subject in the White House: Where is Melania?

Trump reappeared in the capital Thursday to unveil a postage stamp honouring Barbara Bush, the former first lady. But two people with knowledge of Trump’s schedule said she had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House since her husband was inaugurated on January 20. Others say even that is a generous estimate. Officials in the East Wing and West Wing declined multiple requests for comment for this article.

That the first lady’s whereabouts is among the most sensitive of subjects in this White House only adds to the intrigue.

“We haven’t seen such a low-profile first lady since Bess Truman, and that’s going way back in living human memory, nearly 80 years ago,” said Katherine Jellison, a historian at Ohio University whose research has focused on first ladies. She said that, like Trump, Truman spent much of her time returning to “her home base whenever she had the chance”. (In Truman’s case, that was Independence, Missouri.)

“She just kind of liked her own private world,” Jellison said.

The same is true of this First Lady. She has hired staff to work for her in the East Wing, but she rarely goes into the office. Even regulars at Mar-a-Lago say they don’t often see Trump around the premises.

Mounting pressures

Every marriage has its highs and lows, but as with so many other things, the Trumps are in a league of their own. In the span of a few months last year, the couple endured a trial about his philandering, two assassination attempts and a presidential campaign.

The trial, which concerned hush money Donald Trump paid a porn actor, made for an especially challenging moment for the couple, two people with knowledge of their dynamic said. Melania Trump kept well away from the courthouse in lower Manhattan and from the campaign that followed.

The attempted assassination of her husband over the summer – and a subsequent incident in which a gunman got close to Donald Trump on one of his golf courses – deeply spooked a woman who was already worried about her family’s safety and had been for years, according to two people familiar with her thinking. The first time Trump was inaugurated, in 2017, she was concerned about even getting out of the car to walk in the parade.

At the White House this time around, Trump has taken to performing some duties that typically would fall to a first lady. She’s not the one carefully selecting light fixtures for the White House residence, redesigning the Rose Garden, greeting tour groups in the East Wing or hosting receptions for Women’s History Month. He is.

It has been a decade since husband and wife rode that golden escalator down into national political life together. Now, he has come to a moment in which he finds himself flush with power and self-confidence like never before. And yet, as he expands, she shrinks.

The Trumps do share one common approach to public office, though. They both know how to make money from the exposure. In January, Melania Trump launched her own cryptocurrency token. “You can buy $MELANIA now,” she wrote on social media the day before her husband‘s second inauguration.

And then there is the deal she struck with Amazon, reported to have been about $40 million, for a documentary offering a “behind the scenes” look at her life as first lady.

What might that show? It’s hard to say, exactly.

“You serve the country”

Trump waited for months to move into the White House last time. But that was because her son was just 10, and his mother took the time she needed to arrange his schooling and the transition to a new city. Back then, Trump’s parents were omnipresent at the White House as she learned to navigate the role. Trump’s mother, Amalija Knavs, died in January 2024. These days, Trump spends a lot of time with her father, Viktor.

Barron Trump is 19 now. He is finishing his freshman year at New York University and is increasingly independent. Still, there is a part of Trump that remains attached to the protective maternal role she has in his life, people around her say.

“You know, I feel that as children, we have them until they are like 18, 19 years old,” Trump told Fox News in a rare interview she gave in January before the inauguration. “We teach them. We guide them. And then we give them the wings to fly.”

She was asked where she planned to spend most of her time this term.

“I will be in the White House,” she answered. “And, you know, when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach. But my first priority is, you know, to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife. And once we are in on January 20, you serve the country.”

Because Trump is seldom seen or heard from, the times when she does appear provide a glimpse of how she sees her role. Some of her choices have been in line with traditional first lady duties – up to a point.

She stood with her husband at the White House Easter Egg Roll last month, but even that raised ethical and legal concerns after it was revealed that corporate sponsors were allowed to contribute. (All money raised was to go to the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit educational organisation founded by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.)

On April 1, she spoke at the State Department for the International Women of Courage awards, the first time she had been seen in public in Washington in weeks.

At the White House, the first lady has hired her own staff in the East Wing. But what to do when the boss doesn’t come into the office? “We were honoured to welcome these curious, young gardeners to the White House this past week!” reads the caption of one recent video posted to the “FLOTUS” Instagram page.

But FLOTUS herself does not appear in the video. It’s not clear if she was even there.

Film crews have been spotted around Trump lately. But for the most part, the Amazon documentary about her life is, like its subject, shrouded in mystery. Film-makers and Hollywood executives say that the US$40 million ($68m) that Amazon is reported to have paid for the documentary, which Trump is executive producing, is tens of millions of dollars more than what such projects would ordinarily fetch. Amazon declined multiple requests for comment for this article, as did the film’s director, Brett Ratner.

An absent presence

Just as Trump’s presence can make for an interesting sight, so too can her absence.

When the first tour group was led through the East Wing, it was the President who popped up to surprise them. “The first lady worked very hard in making it perfect,” he told the group. But she was not there.

During the first term, Trump restored the Rose Garden. This term, the President plans to pave over it to turn it into a patio so he can entertain al fresco. Trump was initially bothered by her husband‘s plan, according to two people briefed on the matter. She has since been assured the rose bushes will be left alone.

She also came around to the idea of the ballroom that he is adamant about building at the White House – once she was told the construction wouldn’t take place too close to the residence.

One person who has known Trump for a long time is Paolo Zampolli, a former modelling agent from Italy who first spotted her in Milan in the 1990s. The Trumps say it was Zampolli who introduced them, in 1998, at the Kit Kat Club in Manhattan. “She loves the White House,” he insisted, “and she loves the role of serving as our first lady”.

When the President makes his big swing through the Middle East next week, to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the First Lady is not expected to go with him.

But she did accompany him to Vatican City for Pope Francis’ funeral.

When they landed back in Newark, New Jersey, on a Saturday afternoon, it was the First Lady’s 55th birthday. The President gave her a kiss on the cheek. She got into a car, he climbed into Marine One, and they went their separate ways.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Shawn McCreesh

Photographs by: Doug Mills, Maansi Srivastava, Eric Lee

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