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

WASHINGTON – 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 US First Lady does not really live in Washington.

Mrs 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 is like having silent movie era actress Greta Garbo as first lady.

Mrs Trump reappeared in the capital on May 8 to unveil a postage stamp honouring Mrs Barbara Bush, the former US first lady. But two people with knowledge of Mrs Trump’s schedule said she had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House since her husband was inaugurated on Jan 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 US 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 Dr Katherine Jellison, a historian at Ohio University whose research has focused on first ladies. She said that, like Mrs Trump, Mrs Truman spent much of her time returning to “her home base whenever she had the chance”. (In Mrs Truman’s case, that was Independence, Missouri.)

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

The same is true of this US 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 do not often see Mrs 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 in 2024, the couple endured a trial about his philandering, two assassination attempts and a presidential campaign.

The trial, which concerned hush money Mr Trump paid a porn actor, made for an especially challenging moment for the couple, two people with knowledge of their dynamic said. Mrs 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 Mr 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 Mr 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, Mr Trump has taken to performing some duties that typically would fall to a first lady. She is 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, Mrs 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 US$40 million (S$51.5 million), for a documentary offering a “behind the scenes” look at her life as US First Lady.

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

‘You serve the country’

Mrs 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, Mrs Trump’s parents were omnipresent at the White House as she learnt to navigate the role. Mrs Trump’s mother Amalija Knavs died in January 2024. These days, Mrs 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 Mrs 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,” Mrs 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 mum, to be a first lady, to be a wife. And once we are in on Jan 20, you serve the country.”

Because Mrs 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 in April, 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 former US first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.)

On April 1, she spoke at the US 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 Mrs 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 that Amazon is reported to have paid for the documentary, which Mrs 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, Mr Brett Ratner.

An absent presence

Just as Mrs 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 US 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 Mrs Trump for a long time is Mr Paolo Zampolli, a former modelling agent from Italy who first spotted her in Milan in the 1990s. The Trumps say it was Mr 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 US President makes his big swing through the Middle East next week, to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the US 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 US First Lady’s 55th birthday. The US President gave her a kiss on the cheek. She got into a car, he climbed into Marine One, and they went their separate ways. NYTIMES