The week before Election Day in the 2024 campaign, Melania Trump was asked directly about what a victory for her husband would mean for her.
“Are you anxious to be first lady again?” Brian Kilmeade asked her during a Fox & Friends interview. “Do you want to be first lady again?”
“I’m not anxious because this time is different,” Trump answered. “I have much more experience, much more knowledge. I was in the White House before, so when you go in, you know exactly what to expect.”
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As for whether she actually wants to take on the role of first lady again, she didn’t say. It’s possible she didn’t intend to duck the question. It’s also possible that she chose not to answer after remembering what it was like the first time around. The uproar about her jacket. The controversy around her White House landscaping decisions. The leaked tapes of her cursing about being responsible for Christmas decorations.
During Donald Trump’s first administration, Melania—who kept a relatively low profile despite being in the national spotlight—was reportedly deeply unhappy.
It’s now uncertain whether she will even return to Washington, D.C. full-time when she becomes the first first lady to serve in the role in two non-consecutive terms since Frances Cleveland in the late 19th century.
After remaining largely absent from her husband’s campaign in early in 2024, several “Melania-ologists” told Axios in June that it was unlikely that she’d be moving back into the East Wing if her husband returned to the Oval Office.
“She clearly hated being in Washington,” Kate Andersen Brower, an author of several books about the White House, told the outlet at the time.
Instead of a full-time return to D.C., Melania observers claimed it was more likely that she would split her time between Palm Beach and New York, traveling to the White House only to carry out required ceremonial duties such as at state dinners.
It was speculated over the summer that Melania would be particularly eager to keep a foothold in New York if her son, Barron, chose to go to college there. After the 18-year-old did indeed enroll at New York University, it now seems even more likely. Melania remained in Manhattan during the early months of her first stint as first lady partly over concern about pulling then-10-year-old Barron out of school midyear.
“As much as Melania loves Mar-a-Lago and her life in Palm Beach, she will spend more time in New York with her son, who is more important to her than anything else,” a source described as being close to the Trumps told People on the eve of the 2024 election. “If her husband is elected, she will attend the White House functions that she is asked to attend just as she always has. Melania knows what to do, yet has a mind of her own.”
The source added that Melania isn’t keen on relocating to the D.C. “She will have her private living apartment there, and she has her home in New York, and her home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach,” the source was quoted as saying. “She will spend time in all of these places.”
Others variously told the outlet that Melania “definitely won’t be going back to Washington to live” and that since leaving the White House four years ago, she’s been given a break from the “intense public scrutiny that she dislikes.”
So exactly how much time she will spend in the White House carrying out her duties as first lady—like much of what will happen in a second Donald Trump administration—remains unclear.
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