Editor’s note: In a previous version of this article, Bess Truman’s name was misspelled.
Tall, sleek and perfectly coiffed, Melania Trump cuts an elegant figure. Her movements are calculated, her words measured and her affections seemingly mercurial. She’s an enigma to the American public, who have little more than two facts to go on — she’s an ex-model and an immigrant — and her absence since her husband took office only adds to the mystery.
As Donald Trump approaches the end of his second week in office, people are wondering: where’s Melania?
The president disclosed in November that Melania would not immediately move to the White House after the inauguration. Ostensibly, the first lady doesn’t want to disrupt 10-year-old son Barron’s school year, while a source close to the president’s transition team told the New York Post that “the campaign has been difficult for Barron.”
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But with near radio silence and nary a sighting of her since the day after the inauguration, not to mention a largely vacant roster of staff, there’s skepticism of her intentions to move to Washington.
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“There’s no legal requirement that she live in the White House,” says MaryAnne Borrelli, a professor of government at Connecticut College. “She could forge a role that is not centred in Washington.”
Borrelli points out that Ivanka, who has now divested herself of the Trump businesses, could perform the duties of the first lady. (For her part, Ivanka has called the speculation that she would take on this role “inappropriate.”) Otherwise, a White House staffer could take on the job.
Rumours of Melania’s reluctance to commit to life in the White House reached fever pitch this week, causing senior adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff to state to ABC News on Wednesday: “Mrs. Trump will be moving to D.C. and settling into the White House at the end of the school year, splitting her time between New York and D.C. in the meantime.”
The same day, the White House announced that Lindsay Reynolds had been appointed as chief of staff. Then they issued a press release in which Melania stated: “It has been an honour to take on the responsibility of the position of First Lady, with its long history as an important representative of the President, our family, and the traditions of our nation around the world. I am putting together a professional and highly-experienced team which will take time to do properly.”
It was the first time anything had been heard from Melania since a tweet she sent out on Jan. 21 in which she wrote: “I am deeply honoured to serve this wonderful country as First Lady.” She hasn’t tweeted from her @FLOTUS account since. It also bears mentioning that both the announcements and the White House press release came a day after a Trump family insider told Us Weekly that the first lady might be considering staying in New York permanently.
There are other discrepancies dogging Melania. Namely that she has yet to name a social secretary, which despite the title, is more than a party planner.
“The social secretary organizes the events and occasions that happen in the mansion,” Borrelli says. “From state dinners to congressional briefings, they co-ordinate it all. That they have not yet named someone to this post points to it not being a priority for the first 100 days.”
Although there’s no definitive window in which the first state dinner has to be planned, a few big annual events are coming up, including the governor’s dinner at the end of February.
While Melania’s decision to delay her move to Washington is “pretty well unprecedented in the modern presidency,” according to Barbara Perry, presidential studies director of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, her reluctance to step into the first lady limelight isn’t.
“Bess Truman didn’t like the White House; she came with the president, but spent many weeks afterwards at her family home in Missouri,” Perry says. “Jacqueline Kennedy also spent quite a bit of time away. She rented a house in northern Virginia where she felt she could make a home for her kids.”
Perry says that Melania might be looking to those first ladies to provide precedent, but she still remains the only one not to accompany her husband to the White House after the inauguration. While that doesn’t affect the presidency per se, it sends an unusual message to the public.
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“The president is missing out on the opportunity to look like a family person with an all-American family, which is a positive impact,” Perry says. “Plus, first ladies are usually more popular than their husbands. By taking on an issue that they feel strongly about — like military families or children’s health — it’s good for the presidency.”
That may not be the case with this first couple, however. A Gallup poll published in January found that Melania had an approval rating of just 37 per cent, garnering her the lowest favourability rating in modern history.
In a rare speech during the campaign, Melania pledged to make cyberbullying her personal project, but she hasn’t made any official statements about it since. If she were to treat advocacy in the same way she’s been treating her role as first lady so far, that is, not acknowledging it, it would look conspicuous.
“She can choose to not take on a public project, but when you break it down, even the first ladies who didn’t like publicity, like Bess Truman, recognized their position as an opportunity to bring light to a cause that was important to them and the public,” says Carl Anthony, historian of the National First Ladies’ Library. “They became experts in the larger fields they got involved with.”
The elusive first lady is no doubt a deeply private person. Anthony points out that she wasn’t a regular fixture on the social scene in New York, and only attended events on her husband’s arm, never alone. But unlike the inevitable celebrity that she largely avoided before her husband entered politics, when she was merely Donald Trump’s third wife, the spotlight that accompanies her political position cannot be shunned.
“If she removes herself from any advocacy, she’ll be what Donald Trump perhaps always intended her to be: adornment,” Perry says. “She was a non-entity in the campaign, and might end up that way in the White House.”
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