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

The lights never seem to be on, and the shutters stay shut.

As the weeks pass by at the White House, the corner of the residence long used by first ladies remains dark because this first lady does not really live in Washington.

Melania Trump vanishes from view for weeks at a time, holing up in Trump Tower in Manhattan or in Florida, where she can lie low at Mar-a-Lago. Administration officials say she is at the White House more often than the public knows, but when exactly, and for how long, these officials will not (or perhaps cannot) say for certain.

It’s like having Greta Garbo as first lady.

Melania was expected to reappear in the capital on Thursday to unveil a postage stamp honouring Barbara Bush, the former first lady, and to attend a ceremony for military mothers.

But two people with knowledge of her schedule said she had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House since her husband was inaugurated 108 days ago. 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 are 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 Melania, Truman spent much of her time running back 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 Melania around the premises.

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 just a few months last year, the couple endured a public trial about his philandering, his two assassination attempts and a presidential campaign.

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

The attempted assassination of her husband last year – and a subsequent incident in which a gunman got close to the president 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 Donald 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, Donald 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.

‘My first priority is to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife’.

Melania Trump

The Trumps do share one common approach to public office, though. They both know how to make money from the exposure. In January, Melania 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 $US40 million ($62 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’

Melania 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, Melania’s parents were omnipresent at the White House as she learnt to navigate the role. Her mother, Amalija Knavs, died in January 2024. These days, Melania 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 Melania 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,” she told Fox News in a rare interview in January before the inauguration. “We teach them. We guide them. And then we give them the wings to fly.”

Melania 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 Melania is seldom seen or heard, 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 alongside her husband to preside over 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 non-profit 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.

Film crews have been spotted around Melania lately. But for the most part, the Amazon documentary about her life is, like its subject, shrouded in mystery. Documentary makers and Hollywood executives say the $US40 million price tag for the documentary, which Melania 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.

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

When the first tour group was led through the East Wing after inauguration, 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.

One person who has known Melania 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 for the first time, in 1998, at the Kit Kat Club in Manhattan. He refers to Melania reverently as “the lady”. Any pernickety questions about the lady’s absence in Washington, he said, were unfounded. “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, Melania is not expected to be with him.

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

When they landed back in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday afternoon, it was her 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.

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