Last night was the biggest night of 2024 primary season. Donald Trump won 14 of the 15 states that voted, bringing his total delegate count up to 995 of the 1,215 needed to secure his party’s nomination, and knocked his last remaining primary opponent, Nikki Haley, out of the competition.
The one-term, twice-impeached, quadruply-indicted, 77-year-old ex-president gave a rambling, fact-free speech at Mar-a-Lago celebrating his victory and thanking his supporters.
In attendance was his oldest son, Don Jr., and his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as his son Eric and his wife Lara, who’s currently trying to elbow her way into a top post in the Republican National Committee.
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Oh, and Tiffany. We always seem to forget about her.
Today, millions of Americans voted to make Donald Trump the Republican nominee for president of the United States. I’m calling on them to reflect on the following:
You just voted for a man who:
1. Relentlessly attacks our institutions and has promised he will be a dictator on…— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) March 6, 2024
Noticeably absent from Trump’s victory speech was his other daughter, Ivanka, who was just in India celebrating the wedding of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani over the weekend, as well as his wife, Melania.
Evidently, the ex-FLOTUS couldn’t be bothered to come downstairs from her private suite at Mar-a-Lago to join her husband in the ballroom.
Not that anyone’s surprised.
Melania hasn’t appeared at any of her husband’s rallies or attended any of his court appearances. She also hasn’t given any interviews in almost a year and has rarely been seen out in public, aside from a very brief appearance at a fundraiser last month.
Oh, and the time she was caught refusing to share a car with him after her mother’s funeral earlier this year.
Why do you think Melania REFUSED to allow Donald to ride in the same car with her after her mother’s funeral? pic.twitter.com/WZg3zCLmgN— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) January 19, 2024
In January, Trump promised his supporters that Melania would be joining him on the campaign trail “soon.”
“She’s gonna play, and she always did play, a big role,” he said. “She was somebody that you could rely on. She’s very smart, a very compassionate person… She wants to make America great again, too!”
That was almost two months ago, however, and she still hasn’t emerged.
Then during his speech at CPAC at the end of February, he appeared to mistakenly refer to her as “Mercedes”, prompting President Biden to take a swing at him during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
“You got to take a look at the other guy,” he said. “He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name.”
Trump later clarified that he was referring to Mercedes Schlapp, who served in the Trump Administration as White House director of strategic communications, and who was sitting in the audience at CPAC.
Watch the video and determine for yourself.
Whatever the case, it’s clear Melania isn’t interested in participating in her husband’s efforts to stay out of prison presidential campaign. Just like she wasn’t interested in being First Lady, as evidenced by the fact that it took her six months after her husband’s inauguration to finally move into the White House.
Once she got there, she reportedly had little interest in doing, well, anything. Last month, the New York Times reported that Trump White House staff turned her East Wing office into a “gift wrapping room” because she never used it.
The report also claimed Melania spent most days in the White House residence “wearing terry cloth bathrobes during the day and sorting through what office aides referred to as her ‘swag room,’ a locked room filled with key chains, crystal bookends and other trinkets from her time at the White House.”
According to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania’s former BFF, senior adviser, and author of Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady, the ex-FLOTUS “never wanted to be there in the first place.”
Speaking to the MeidasTouch podcast recently, Wolkoff said Melania becoming the first lady again would be “the most tragic thing for our country” because “giving her that platform [would] do positively, absolutely nothing, except create more controversy.”
Wolkoff also opined that the reason Melania remains so elusive is because it’s the only way to seem interesting.
“If she says nothing, there is nothing for anyone to report. If she doesn’t give an interview, there is nothing for anyone to say,” she said, adding that Melania uses speculation to “stay relevant.”
Author Katie Rogers digs into the pair’s icy relationship, which was reportedly never great to begin with but got especially frigid after Donald Trump took office.
