Reports surfaced days after the once and potential president defeated vice chairman Kamala Harris in November that Melania Trump may depart from the era of the traditional political parties and spend the majority of her time as the next second woman in New York City, where their child Barron is a first-year student.
Although Melania Trump has not formally stated her plans, she has been more visible during her father’s change, hosting the former Japanese prime president’s wife at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and being careful with her strategy trail appearances next year.
Despite her rise in appearances, columnist and author of First Women Kate Andersen , Brower predicted Melania Trump may play a smaller portion in her father’s presidency than her immediate predecessor, Jill Biden, who broke with tradition by becoming the first second lady to remain working properly, in her case, as a part-time community college English and writing instructor.
” If past is prologue, then we’ll have a first lady who is less active than Dr. Biden”, Brower told the Washington Examiner of Melania Trump. ” I think it’s important, however, that we look at first ladies as individuals and respect that each woman, from Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the first truly activist first lady, to Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, who prioritized their roles as mothers in the White House, figure it out on their own”.
Brower underscored that there is” no job description, no pay, and endless expectations” for first ladies. Melania Trump first caused controversy during the president-elect’s first administration when she and Barron, who was 11 years old at the time, did not move to Washington, D. C., until after the end of the 2016-2017 school year and negotiations over a new prenuptial agreement between her and her husband.
” A lot depends on what stage of their lives they’re in”, Brower said of first ladies. ” I thought Barron’s being in college would give me more flexibility for Melania, but it also strikes me as being a person who dislikes Washington and has a habit of making her own schedule.”
According to historian Andrew Och, Melania Trump has suggested in her initial interviews that she is excited about being a first lady again, especially given her pro-children policies, including her” Be Best” program, and that first ladies have historically been politically significant because they are more well-known than their husbands, and can help them improve their public image.
” Melania Trump, when she was first lady, kind of did her own thing”, Och told the Washington Examiner. ” She doesn’t care whether the public likes her or not. She would simply go out and do what most people thought she would, to a certain extent, and she succeeded.
During Melania Trump’s first administration, when some of his supporters poured their sympathies on her, she was a political savant. For instance,” Free Melania” memes were perpetuated because of the alleged extramarital liaison between Stormy Daniels and her facial expressions during Trump’s first inauguration. But she has also been criticized, specifically regarding her decision to wear a$ 39 Zara jacket with the words” I really don’t care” screen printed on the back during a 2018 trip to a migrant children’s shelter in Texas. Melania Trump, the second foreign-born first lady, has maintained that the jacket was a message to the news media and not about immigrants. She is a former fashion model who never graced the cover of Vogue during her husband’s first term. She has also supported her husband’s claims to have been cheated out of the 2020 election.
” The public interest starts with social media”, Och said. Melania Trump and Michelle Obama are the two first ladies on social media. When social media really started to explode, they started to emerge. The last first lady that]was liked], no matter what you thought about her husband, and there were very, very strong opinions in both directions]about ] George W. Bush, but everyone loves Laura”.
Regardless of Melania Trump’s approach, David Pietrusza, another presidential historian, contended it is not uncommon for first ladies not to have public-facing roles in their husbands ‘ administrations.
One of the best examples is Harry Truman’s wife, Bess Truman, who” simply despised Washington”, according to Pietrusza.
Bess Truman “was hardly a public figure in any real sense,” Pietrusza claimed for the Washington Examiner. ” Bess’s hatred manifested itself, as historian David McCullough noted, in’ an expression that looked as if her feet hurt.'”
Pietrusza also named a number of former first ladies who experienced health problems or personal tragedies, such as Franklin Pierce’s wife, Jane Pierce, who became” severely withdrawn” after their last surviving son died in a train accident two months before his inauguration.
” William McKinley’s wife, Ida Saxton McKinley, suffered from seizures, and this hampered her public life significantly”, Pietrusza said. ” William Howard Taft’s ambitious wife, Helen Taft, suffered a stroke and similarly became incapacitated”.
” While Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, wielded great power, particularly after her husband’s stroke, his first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, became seriously ill from Bright’s disease and died in 1914″, the historian added. ” Warren Harding’s wife, Florence Kling DeWolfe Harding, similarly suffered from Bright’s disease and spent a good deal of her White House tenure in poor health and bedridden, though she ultimately survived her husband”.
In her first post-election interview, Melania Trump described herself as “very, very busy” with her office and transition team, as well as “organizing the residence and packing,” but she said the process has been less” challenging” than it was in 2016, when Barack Obama and Michelle Obama did not grant her “much access” to the White House.
” I know what you need to establish, you know what kind of people you need to hire that, to be in your office, so that’s what I’m doing now”, she told Fox News. ” I’m interviewing people for my office. I’m establishing everything that it needs, so we could start on Day One, everybody is in, and we start working”.
Melania Trump and the president-elect had dinner with Akie Abe, the widow of murdered former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, last month, according to Melania Trump, who the transition team depended on. The president-elect and the late Abe had a close relationship during his first administration.
” It was a privilege to host Mrs. Akie Abe at Mar-a-Lago once again”, Melania Trump wrote on X in a post that was shared by the transition. ” We fondly remembered her late husband, former Prime Minister Abe, and honored his remarkable legacy”.
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The president-elect, too, appears to be aware of his wife’s popularity, praising her and the rest of his team in an interview during his visit to the New York Stock Exchange.
” I have a great partner right over here, our , first , lady. People love our , first , lady, and we’re going to do something very special”, he told CNBC.
