Amid receiving an award at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, former first lady Melania Trump‘s absence raised eyebrows online as she continues to remain out of public view while her husband, Donald Trump, campaigns for president.
Since the former president began his 2024 bid for the White House, critics have questioned why his wife has appeared to remove herself from public life amid Trump’s campaign and various ongoing legal troubles. Her presence has been scaled back, in contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when she took an active role.
On Friday at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort residence, Tom Homan, who served during the Trump administration as acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded Melania a “Child Advocacy Award”
However, she was not in attendance as her husband accepted the award on her behalf.
“We wanted to take this opportunity, I know the first lady couldn’t get here, but we wanted to give Melania Trump the Child Advocacy Award because she did so much for children when she was first lady,” Homan said.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s spokesperson via email for comment.
Update from Mar-a-Lago: “I know First Lady couldn’t get here, but we wanted to give Melania Trump the Child Advocacy Award because she did so much for children when she was First Lady.” pic.twitter.com/8ZbXCRCrHo
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 5, 2024
Since her award absence, some have taken to X, formerly Twitter, to question her absence.
X user Isabel Santos wrote, “WHERE is MELANIA? ‘I know First Lady couldn’t get here, but we wanted to give Melania Trump the Child Advocacy Award because she did so much for children when she was First Lady.’ WHAT did she do for the children? Her choice of jacket said it all ‘I really don’t care do you?’”
Another X user realTuckFrumper wrote, “Trump Accepts Award On Melania’s Behalf Because ‘First Lady Couldn’t Get Here’ (Pssst: She Lives There).”
MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas wrote on X, “Trump held another unhinged event at Mar-A-Lago where Melania was supposed to receive some silly MAGA award but she ditched him and he took the award himself. The media still tries to push some narrative that she will take on a larger role but we all just have to wait and that her mystery is just who she is.”
Meanwhile, the former first lady is expected to hold her first major political event of the year appearing at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago on April 20 for the Log Cabin Republicans.
Melania has long maintained a close relationship with the Log Cabin Republicans, which bills itself as the nation’s largest organization representing LGBT conservatives and allies.
The fundraiser is the launch of the organization’s “Road to Victory” program that plans to target voters in swing states. Meanwhile, Melania was also given an award by the Log Cabin Republicans during the 2021 Spirit of Lincoln gala, which was also held at Mar-a-Lago.
According to The New York Times, in a financial disclosure last year, Melania reported receiving a $250,000 payment from the group in December 2022.
The former president has sought to portray himself as more moderate on LGBTQ+ issues than some Republicans, at one point holding an upside-down Pride flag on the 2016 campaign trail, at times leaving him at odds with the GOP’s most conservative voters. However, he embraced policies during his first term that critics say would chip away at the community’s rights.
The former first lady had also maintained a low profile during the former president’s 2020 campaign, and has yet to be seen on the 2024 campaign trail, although she has attended a handful of events at Mar-a-Lago.
Melania reappeared in early March following her absence at her husband’s Super Tuesday watch party when the couple hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at a dinner reception at Mar-a-Lago.
In May, roughly six months after Trump announced his reelection campaign, Melania Trump told Fox News Digital that she was fully supportive of her husband’s decision to run for president again.
During his town hall in February in South Carolina, the former president was asked if his wife would be active on the campaign trail, much like current first lady Jill Biden has been on behalf of President Joe Biden for his reelection campaign.
“She’s a private person,” Trump said. “It’s funny, she was a very successful model, very, very successful, and yet she was a private person. She’s going to be out a lot, not because she likes doing it, but she likes the result. She wants to see this country really succeed. [The people] love the fact that she’s not out there so much. You know, a lot of first ladies will go out. They want to be everywhere. They get angry at their husband because he’s not introducing them. If I didn’t introduce Melania she’d be very happy about it. She’s just a different kind of a person. And she loves the country.”
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