Melania Trump returns to Washington after four-week absence

(CNN) — After a four-week absence from Washington, first lady Melania Trump returned to the White House on Saturday for an annual dinner and reception with the nation’s governors.

“She worked very hard on making sure that everything was beautiful. And she’s very good at that,” President Donald Trump said in brief remarks to governors in the candlelit East Room, his wife seated nearby at a table filled with overflowing vases of white hydrangeas and tulips.

While Melania Trump may be preparing the White House for visitors — she announced in a statement last week that tours of the historic home are reopening to the public — the first lady apparently has had less interest in spending time there.

Since her husband took the oath of office on January 20, she has not spent significant time at the White House, according to sources with direct knowledge of her schedule. Melania Trump was an active presence during the first days of the president’s second term, but after joining her husband for a January 24 trip to natural disaster-ravaged North Carolina and California, hadn’t returned to Washington until Saturday.

The first lady was expected to spend a majority of her time between New York, where son Barron is attending college, and Florida, CNN reported during the presidential transition. Sources familiar with her thinking insisted at the time that she would still be present for major events, including Saturday’s ball, and would have her own platform and priorities as first lady.

But the past month suggests her time in Washington may be even more limited than expected, signaling a remarkable, if unsurprising, break in precedent for a first family.

A spokesperson for the office of the first lady declined to comment on her whereabouts.

Even as she’s been open about traversing the East Coast, the first lady has previously emphasized that she’d be in DC. Asked where she planned to spend her time in a January 13 interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Trump said, “I will be in the White House. 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.”

She continued, “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.”

The president has also spent significant time in Florida since taking office, traveling to Miami or Palm Beach for his first four weekends in office.

Yet Melania Trump has been absent as the president has welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. She has missed countless executive order signings and major events on women’s sports, the return of wrongfully detained American Marc Fogel from Russia, and the signing of her husband’s first legislative victory, the Laken Riley Act, among other key accomplishments he has touted.

Trump has yet to embark on any solo official travel as first lady, foreign or domestic. By contrast, at this time in her husband’s first term, she had attended a joint press conference and Oval Office meeting between her husband and Netanyahu and hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife, Akie Abe, for weekend events at Mar-a-Lago.

Her preference, sources familiar with her thinking have said, is not to be publicly involved in the day-to-day of her husband’s second term, and there is no internal backlash among the president’s team to that decision. Still, sources often cite her as a constant voice in her husband’s ear, giving him advice.

And her first week of the new term offered initial signs of a potential shift toward a more public profile for the notoriously private first lady.

Shortly after the November 2024 election, Amazon inked a multimillion-dollar licensing deal with Trump to film a documentary set for release later this year. Trump will serve as executive producer, meaning she has full editorial control over its content.

The director of that documentary, Brett Ratner, traveled aboard Air Force One on January 24 and was seen filming or observing the first lady and president as they met impacted families and surveyed damage from Hurricane Helene in Asheville and the wildfires in Pacific Palisades.

But as the president traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for an event on his proposal to end taxes on tips, Melania Trump and her aides split off, skipping the rest of the four-day trip to travel separately to Florida, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

After that, her next public appearance wasn’t until Saturday, when she processed into the East Room to “Hail to the Chief,” smiling alongside her husband, who dressed in a tuxedo, while sporting a matching, businesslike tuxedo and crisp white shirt herself.

Asked by CNN one day after the California trip what kind of role he expected his wife to have during his second term, Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “She was always very much involved but you didn’t see it — more behind the scenes — but she was always a front-of-the-scenes person.”

He continued, “I think she really wanted — she felt badly about North Carolina. She felt very badly about California. Los Angeles, got a lot of friends. I have a lot of friends in North Carolina and both, and she has a lot of friends in California. So she wanted to be with me.”

During her time away from Washington, Melania Trump hasn’t been entirely off the radar.

She released a new official portrait on January 27, taken at the White House on January 21, the day after inauguration. A trio of her top aides participated in a rare interview about the first lady published February 3 in the British publication “Hello! Magazine.” The following week, she announced the resumption of White House public tours.

Trump has hired a small group of East Wing employees and has been working with staff, according to a White House official, and has hinted in previous interviews that she could continue or expand her first-term “Be Best” platform focused on children’s well-being, the opioid crisis’ impact on kids and families, and online behavior.

Regine Mahaux, a longtime favorite photographer of the Trump family who captured both of the first lady’s 2017 and 2025 official portraits, told Hello! that Melania Trump is “more free.”

“She’s always been hands on, but she’s more free nowadays to make a statement,” Mahaux said. “She’s a different person than she was eight years ago and has always been true to herself. This time, it feels like a different energy with new people that the President has surrounded himself with.”

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