The lights never seem to be on and the blinds remain closed.
As the week passes in the White House, the corner of the residence used by the first ladies remains dark, because this first lady does not really live in Washington.
Melania Trump disappears from the view during the week at the same time, having Trump’s lid in Manhattan or Florida, where she can go down in Mar-A-Lago. Administration officials say that she is in the White House plus Ofte than the public knows, but when exactly, and for how long, these officials will not say (or perhaps not) with certainty.
It’s like having Greta Garbo as First Lady.
Mrs. Trump is expected to be in the capital on Thursday to present a postal seal in honor of Barbara Bush, the former first lady, and attend a ceremony for military mothers. But two people with knowledge or the schedule of Mrs. Trump said she was less than 14 days in the White House since her husband was inaugurated 108 days ago. Others say that even that is a generous estimate. East Wing and West Wing officials rejected multiple requests for comments for this article.
That the whereabouts of the first lady is among the most sensitive subjects in this White House only adds to the intrigue.
“We saw each other to see a first lady with such a low profile from Bess Truman, and that goes back to living human memory, almost 80 years ago,” said Katherine Jellison, historian of the University of Oh-Ohio whose ladies. She said that, like Mrs. Trump, Mrs. Truman spent much of her time running back to “her base of operations every time she had the opportunity.” (In the case of Mrs. Truman, that was Independence, Missouri).
“She just liked her own private world,” Jellison said.
The same is true for this first lady. She has hired staff to work for her in the east wing, but rarely enters the office. Even regular customers in Mar-A-Lago say that they often do not see Mrs. Trump in the facilities.
Each marriage has its ups and downs, but as with so many other things, the Trump are in their own league. In the period of only a few months last year, the couple suffered a public trial about their philandering, two murder attempts and a presidential campaign.
The trial, which referred to the money in silence that Mr. Trump paid for a porn star, made a challenging moment for the couple, two people said with knowledge of their dynamics. Mrs. Trump remained very far from the house in the bass Manhattan and the campaign that was launched in the weeks that followed.
Her husband’s murder attempt during the summer, and a posterior incident in which an armed man approached Mr. Trump in one of her golf courses, deeply scared 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 that President Trump was inaugurated, in 2017, he was worried about the car to walk in the parade.
This time in the White House, Trump has performance tasks of some dense that would normally fall to a first lady. She is not the one that carefully selects the lamps for the residence of the White House, redesigning the rose garden, I greet the tours groups in the east wing or organizing receptions for the month of the history of women. Hey.
He has a spray band and his wife of decade, that the golden staircase by Intoto National Political Life together. Now, he has reached a time when he is ras by power and self -confidence as never before. And yet, as he expands, she shrinks.
Mr. and Mrs. Trump share a common approach to public office, thought. They both know how to make money with the exhibition. In January, Mrs. Trump launched her own cryptocurrency card. “You can buy $ Melania now,” he wrote on social networks the day before the second inauguration of her husband.
And then there is the Shestruck treatment with Amazon, which is reported that it has one leg around $ 40 million, for a documentary that offers a look “behind the scene” to his life as First Lady.
What could show that? It’s hard to say exactly.
‘You serve the country’
Mrs. Trump waited months to move to the White House last time. But that was because his son was only 10 years old, and his mother played the time he needed to organize his education and transition to a new city. At that time, Mrs. Trump’s parents were omnipresent in the White House while learning to navigate the paper. Mrs. Trump’s mother, Amalija Knavs, died in January 2024. In these days, Mrs. Trump spends a lot of time with her father, Viktor.
Barron Trump is 19 years old now. He is finishing his first year at the University of New York and is increasingly independent. Even so, there is a part of Mrs. Trump that remains attached to the protective maternal role she has in her life, people around her say.
“You know, I feel that, as children, we have them until they are 18, 19 years old,” Mrs. Trump told Fox News in a strange interview she gave in January before the inauguration. “We teach you. We guide them. And then we give them the wings to fly.”
They asked him where he planned to spend his time in this period.
“I’ll be in the White House,” he replied. “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, be a first lady, be a advice.
Because Mrs. Trump rarely seen or heard, the times in which they appear provide an idea or how she sees her role. Some of their options have the leg in line with the traditional densia of the First Lady, to some extent.
She stopped with her husband to preside over the Easter egg roll of the White House last month, but even that raised ethical and legal concerns after it was revealed that corporate sponsors were allowed to contribute. (All the money raised was to go to the Historical Association of the White House, a private non -profit educational organization founded by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.)
On April 1, he spoke in the State Department of the International Women’s Awards, the first time he was seen in public in Washington in Weekly.
In the White House, the first lady has hired her own staff in the east wing. But what to do when the boss does not enter the office? “We are honored to welcome these curious and young gardens to the White House last week!” Read the title of a video recently published on the Instagram page “Flotus”.
But Flotus itself does not appear in the video. It is not clear if she was there.
Filming teams have been seen around Mrs. Trump Latty. But for the most part, Amazon’s documentary about his life is, as his subject, wrapped in mystery. Documentary filmmakers and Hollywood executives say that the $ 40 million that Amazon has paid for the documentary, that Mrs. Trump is producing, is tens of millions of dollars more than these projects would normally seek. Amazon rejected multiple requests for comments for this article, as well as the film director, Brett Ratner.
Just as the presence of Mrs. Trump can be an interesting view, she can also absence.
When the first tour group was guided by the east wing, it was Trump who appeared to surprise them. “The first lady worked very hard to make it perfect,” he told the group. But she wasn’t there.
Duration Trump’s first term, Mrs. Trump replanted and restored the Rosas Garden. This term, the president plans to pave him to make him a patio so he can entertain outdoors. Mrs. Trump was initially upset by her husband’s plan, according to two people informed about the matter. Since then, he has been sure that the bushes themselves will remain alone.
She also reached the idea of the dance hall that he is inflexible on the construction of the White House; Once it was tolerated, the construction will be carried out too close to the residence.
A person who meets Mrs. Trump for a long time is Paolo Zampolli, a former Italian model agent who first saw her in Milan in the 1990s. The Trump say it was Mr. Zampolli who presented them for the first time, in 1998, at the Kat Club Kit in Manhattan. It refers to Mrs. Trump reverently as “the lady.” Any persistent question about the absence of the lady in Washington, she said, were unfounded. “She loves the White House,” he insisted, “and loves the role of serving as our first lady.”
When the president makes his great change in the Middle East next week, to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the first lady is not expected to accompany him.
But she accompanied him to the city of the Vatican for the funeral of Pope Francis.
When they landed on Newark on a Saturday afternoon, it was Mrs. Trump’s 55th birthday. The president kissed him on the cheek. She climbed into a car, he climbed to Marine One and went through separate roads.