“To all who asked, I will not be inaugurated on January 20,” tweeted Trump through his official account, which no longer exists.
Many in the White House were definitely hearing the president’s thoughts on this important and historic issue for the first time – including his wife, according to a senior White House official.
Until that tweet, said the White House official, Melania Trump was not 100% sure whether he would go into Biden’s possession or not.
“It is not the first time that she knew what he was doing because he tweeted before he told her,” said the source, who downplayed the importance of the first lady receiving news about what is ostensibly his agenda too, based on in Trump’s mood on that specific day.
The official, like many, was clear that the event with the tweet did not solicit his sympathy for the first lady.
“She is part of it. She can be silent, but she is part of it,” said the source.
“These” are the president’s recent activities, the denial of his loss, the complicity in inciting supporters inflamed with lies and conspiracy theories, and the abject abdication of an official role. The extroverted first lady did nothing significant as the weeks of her term ended. It did not establish an office to continue its platform in the post-White House years, according to a source familiar with its activities. She also did not help integrate the arrival of First Lady Jill Biden – with whom she has not yet made contact, the source said.
The only thing that Trump did, besides packing the White House, working on photo albums of his time as first lady and overseeing photo shoots of a rug and decorative items, was to make a complicated statement about the events of last Wednesday – fair, five days after them took place.
“There has never been a first lady as stubborn and challenging as Melania Trump,” says Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women: the Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies”. “I think she is digging. I think she channeled her husband’s fury and is obviously not interested in playing the traditional role of first lady who, in times of crisis, seeks to unite and calm the country.”
Instead, she defended the president, something she didn’t always do before in times of turmoil. In his statement Monday morning, Trump did not mention her husband’s name, nor did he indicate that he should receive an iota of responsibility for the insurrection.
Instead, she seemed to transform parts of old statements and speeches into a new one and added in a paragraph that portrayed herself as a victim of the continued criticism of a former employee. Trump’s reclusive manner sometimes arouses public curiosity about how aligned she is with the president, especially when he is being criticized. Her hand blows, steel face and frequent outbursts of independent opinion created a possible scenario for her husband’s critics that she might not be like him, or even dislike him.
But if the past few weeks have proved anything, it is that she is more in line with the president than most would have guessed.
“She understands her husband and what he stands for, and that just doesn’t bother her,” said Brower. “She is not a victim and will not leave the White House to apologize for her husband’s behavior.”
Trump ‘not sad to leave’
As the president publicly protested the election, fraudulently claiming that she had been rigged and clinging to the false hope of staying in the White House, his wife was packing to move, say several sources who have watched Trump’s activities since the end from November.
The first lady is already doing more than half the job of dispatching belongings to Mar-a-Lago or storage, having gradually supervised the move for weeks. The residence team had to assist in the semi-land operation, facilitating packaging logistics without arousing the ire of the president, who really believed he would stay where he was.
Residence staff remain in office, many through various administrations. No matter who the president is, it just matters that they represent the American presidency.
“They are the most patriotic people I have ever met,” said Brower, whose first book was “The Residence: Within the Private World of the White House”. “They are moving forward with the change, but they had to be part of it in disguise because they don’t want to upset (the President) Trump.”
Melania Trump’s convenience in packing and getting ready to leave also signals her desire to end Washington and the past four years of dramatic ups and downs.
“(Melania Trump) is not sad to be leaving,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s humor.
This is a place that she differs from her husband – he desperately wants to stay, she is fine to go.
“Pat Nixon is the most recent example I can think of of a first lady who compares to Melania Trump,” said Brower, but perhaps only in circumstances, not in action.
“While Watergate was still furious, Pat Nixon spent a lot of time secluded in her room alone at the Residence. Butlers brought her breakfast and often she just drank coffee. People around her started to worry about her health because it was obvious that Watergate was taking a toll and she was losing weight, “said the author.
Contrary to tradition
Those who have been close to Trump in the past two weeks have not noticed a change in behavior towards isolation and sadness, in fact it has been Trump’s lack of emotional connectivity with the terrible turmoil that unfolded live on television, and his lack of desire to issue an immediate report responding to or condemning the violence in real time, which prompted two of his longest-serving employees to resign with immediate effect, the sources said.
“Usually, the first lady of a president with a single term comes to his side publicly. President Ford served less than a full term and Betty Ford even intervened to read his grant letter to Carter when he lost in 1976,” he said. Brower.
On Wednesday, an announcement was made that Blair House, the historic official White House guesthouse where several presidents (including Trump) spent the night before his oath, would welcome Biden to stay as well. CNN had previously reported that Biden, without an invitation from Blair House’s president and first lady, had yet to stay at a hotel the day before he took office.
But the invitation was not sent at the urging of Melania Trump.
“She had nothing to do with it,” said the official. The invitation may have read “White House”, but it was issued through the State Department, whose Office of the Chief Protocol oversees the management of Blair House.