MILWAUKEE — The Republican National Convention has been chockablock with Trumps.
Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, delivered a keynote address. Her husband, Eric, has made the rounds on cable news. Another Trump son, Donald Trump Jr., spoke for 19 minutes Wednesday night, long enough even to hand the mic to his teenage daughter, Kai.
And yet, where is Melania?
Donald Trump’s wife has remained out of sight. She has not been in the VIP box where Trump has presided over the prime-time show each night. She has not been on television. She is sparsely featured in the videos played for delegates between speakers and in the photos plastered on the arena’s walls.
Melania Trump is set to appear Thursday as her husband delivers his acceptance speech on the convention’s final night. But, in a break from tradition, she is not expected to speak. (Other Trumps are likely to make their first appearances, too: Ivanka, the former president’s daughter who is keeping a distance from his current campaign, and Barron, 18, Donald Trump’s youngest son.)
At this celebration of all things Trump, nobody knows quite what to make of this.
Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, speculated Wednesday from the floor of the convention hall that it is probably just “too overwhelming” for Melania Trump, given the assassination attempt on her husband Saturday. “I think it’s going to be emotional even to be with him,” Walker said, “let alone speak.”
Asked about the former first lady Tuesday, Matt Schlapp, a former White House aide, shrugged. “I don’t know whether she’s coming or not,” he said. “Melania has always taken full measure of her ability to have private time for as long as possible. I know that she’s completely behind this campaign.”
Melania Trump has been disappearing from view for a while now. She did not show up at her husband’s trial for falsifying business records to cover up hush payments to Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who claimed to have had a tryst with him while his wife was home with a newborn. So far in this campaign, Melania Trump has done two fundraisers with gay Republicans, but little else.
“Melania will be out whenever it’s appropriate for her,” Lara Trump said in an interview with The New York Times last week. “Just because people are not overtly out front with banners or signs or whatever it might be, doesn’t mean they are not 100% on board.”
Melania Trump was overtly out front at the last two Republican conventions.
In 2016, she gave a speech that plagiarized chunks of a Michelle Obama speech. In 2020, when the country was being rocked by COVID-19 and unrest after the death of George Floyd, Melania Trump delivered a speech from the Rose Garden that was seen as more compassionate than anything at that convention. “I know many people are anxious, and some feel helpless,” she said then. “I want you to know that you are not alone.”
Ordinarily, wives play a central role at these conventions, humanizing their spouse. Donald Trump has relied on his son’s wife and former aides to do that this time around.
“Last night, when we heard Lara, she told us a lot of things that we already knew about Donald, but we didn’t know his personal side, his family side, how compassionate he really is,” a Nebraska delegate, Mary Gerdes, said Wednesday. Did she think it was odd that the candidate’s wife seemed to want nothing to do with this convention? “It would’ve been great to hear from her,” Gerdes said, “but she’s had a rough week.”
After Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, Nancy Reagan rushed to the emergency room to be by his side, spending the next 13 days at the hospital with him. (“Honey, I forgot to duck,” Ronald Reagan told his wife.)
Donald Trump’s wife was not by his side for his first public appearance since the shooting here Monday. She did put out a letter, though. “A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald’s passion,” she wrote, citing her husband’s “laughter” and his “love of music.”
On Wednesday night, Trump chose to walk out onto the convention floor to James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (it was the version featuring Luciano Pavarotti).
This is a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.
A little while later, the founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, watched as Kai Trump spoke onstage. At this introduction of yet another Trump, Kirk smiled and remarked that “this political dynasty goes a lot longer than liberals realize.”
Melania Trump’s role in that dynasty, however, continues to be a mystery. Kirk, asked if he thought she would join her husband in the White House if he won in November, wouldn’t even speculate. “I have no idea.”