Melania Trump has been quiet over the past week as her adopted country decided if her family would stay in the White House for another four years.
Has she evaded the limelight because of the outgoing US President’s tantrums over the election result that saw Joe Biden become president-elect, or is she calmly planning her next move, which could be significantly different to Donald Trump’s?
Nobody could blame Melania Trump for being relieved to say goodbye to her essentially undefined, unpaid, a high-pressure position as First Lady and Kate Anderson Brower, a journalist and author of First Women, a book about the partners of presidents said that she believed Melania would probably be secretly relieved because this isn’t what she signed up for.
So what will Melania Trump’s next move be? Will she follow other first ladies and go on to write a tell-all book, take up worthy projects, help her husband navigate his new endeavours, which experts say is the least likely, or just concentrate on her position as a loving mum and live life as a lady of leisure?
She has numerous possibilities, especially where the family might relocate to and whether she will choose to live with son Barron separately to her husband.
Speculation surrounds whether Melania and Barron will go back to New York so he can return to his former private school in Manhattan, or stay in Washington while he completes high school in Maryland, not far from the White House.
The Obamas stayed in Washington so their two daughters could finish up at their private school, but after January 21, Melania could return to the Trump Tower penthouse in New York City, the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, or head to the Seven Springs estate in Westchester and the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster.
Experts say it could be Florida because she voted in person at Palm Beach County, registered as the Trump’s official home.
Historian Katherine Jellison of Ohio University told USA Today she assumed Melania Trump would go back to Florida, or perhaps she will be able to persuade her husband to return to New York as their official home and resume the kind of life she led before the White House.
Anita McBride, who runs the Legacies of America’s First Ladies Initiative at American University and was former first lady Laura Bush’s chief of staff, said she felt Melania would concentrate on her family and her son, helping him to manage the transition.
Mind you, nobody actually cared about her when she was the First Lady and they probably won’t care about her after.
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