Melania Trump could return as First Lady following the US Presidential Election, but her appearances during husband Donald’s campaign have been few and far between.
After months of glaring absence, Slovenian-born Melania revealed why she decided to join Trump on stage at Madison Square Garden on October 27, telling Fox & Friends: ‘Well it was an incredible place. I love New York City.
‘I wanted to support my husband. So I was there for him and for everybody else.’
When she was First Lady of the United States, Melania spent a lot of time in the public eye, but her lack of appearances during the 2024 election campaign has been noted by many.
At one point, her absence was mocked with fake ‘missing’ posters. One person even hired a plane to fly a banner reading ‘Where’s Melania?’ over an Iowa State football game when Donald Trump was attending last September.
The public first noticed that she had disappeared from the public eye during Donald Trump’s criminal trial over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels in New York.
Other family members showed up to show their support for the former US president, who was found guilty of all 34 charges, but his wife was nowhere to be seen.
Are Donald Trump and Melania still married?
Donald Trump married Melania, a Slovenian-American citizen, married on January 22, 2005. They had a child, Barron, a year later.
The pair began dating after they met at a party in 1998, and became engaged in 2004.
Melania is Trump’s third wife, with the president having previously been married to Ivana from 1977-1992.
However, Melania has never been the most visible of partners during Trump’s political career.
In an interview with Meet the Press in September 2023, Donald Trump said of his wife: ‘She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person, and she loves our country very much. She’ll be — at the appropriate time — she’ll be out there.’
Where was Melania Trump born?
Melania was born Melanija Knavs in Novo Mesto, which is in Slovenia and was part of Yugoslavia at the time of her birth.
She grew up in Sevnica, another town in Slovenia, and originally worked as a model before moving to New York City in 1996.
She became a permanent US resident in 2001 and a US citizen in 2006.
Melania is only the second First Lady who wasn’t born in the US – the first being Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams (who was president from 1825-1829) – who was born in London.
What has Melania been doing?
Melania has never been one to jump into Trump’s political limelight.
Although she encouraged him to run for president in 2016, she preferred to play roles behind the scene over appearing at campaign rallies.
Life as First Lady of the United States often necessitated public appearances, but she’s faded away since her husband left office in 2020.
In fact, she was notably absent from his victory party on Super Tuesday, when he won all but one of the 15 state primaries.
However, she’s reappeared with Trump at various political events during the lead up to this year’s election – including the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin in July, less than a week after an attempted assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
However, unlike in 2016 and 2020, she did not give a speech, breaking with a modern tradition.
Melania has also been working on her memoir, which was released in October, and in which she defied Donald Trump by revealing she is a passionate defender of the right to abortion.
She also revealed that ‘occasional political disagreements between me and my husband’ are ‘part of our relationship’, and says she prefers to ‘address them privately rather than publicly challenging him.’
Most recently, Melania attended a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27, where she did speak.
She gave a rare speech to her husband’s supporters, in which she said ‘New York City and America need their magic back’, before welcoming Donald Trump on stage.
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