While Donald Trump is eagerly looking forward to return to the White House, Melania is still balking. According to an insider at Mar-a-Lago, the 54-year-old will play the First Lady “part time, but full-time mom” dividing her time between Washington, Palm Beach and New York, where her son Barron is attending college. This choice has triggered an avalanche of gossip about the possibility that the newly elected president’s wife is preparing for a “soft” divorce—she would become the first to ask for it while her husband is in office.
The source revealed to the New York Post that Mrs. Trump will be “the First Lady, but only on her own terms. She will attend major events. But no ladies’ tea and no—or very few—interviews.” Instead, she will stay near to her son Barron, as she also did during Donald’s first term, by moving from New York to Potomac, Maryland, when the now 18-year-old was in high school.
In September, in an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, the only one during her husband’s entire campaign, Melania had joked, “I’m not an empty nester.” In May, a source told PEOPLE magazine that, “Barron is her world” and she is the “primary decision-maker about him and his future.”
Newly enrolled at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Barron decided to avoid the dorms, unlike his peers, and sleep in the luxurious apartment inside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. “It was his decision to come here, to want to stay in New York and live in his home. And I respect that,” Melania had commented in the Fox News interview. “I’m very proud of how he’s grown. He’s enjoying his college days. I hope he will have a great experience because his life is very different from any other 18- to 19-year-old boy.”
Social media has its own take on the news; in fact, rumors are rampant that the new First Lady has decided to follow her son to New York to get the public used to her absence in view of an upcoming divorce. However, it is not news that Melania is among the least outwardly affectionate presidential wives in recent history. On numerous occasions she has rebuffed his kisses or handholding at public events.
