Melania Trump was not present when her husband, former President Donald Trump, was arraigned on 34 criminal charges in New York City last week. She was not present later that day at Mar-a-Lago when in a speech he attacked the district attorney who convened the grand jury that brought those charges.
For more than century, would-be first ladies have happily (or perhaps unhappily) stumped by their men en route to the White House.
According to People magazine, Melania Trump may have decided to give her husband’s entire 2024 presidential campaign a miss. A source told writer Linda Marx that Melania Trump “hasn’t recently taken part in her husband’s political events. It is not comfortable for her.” Perhaps this will not come as a shock, considering how absent Melania Trump was during her husband’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, but it is nonetheless a striking development.
For more than a century, would-be first ladies have happily (or perhaps unhappily) stumped by their men en route to the White House. Florence Harding, for example, was hugely involved in the 1920 Front Porch campaign of her beloved Warren, and despite a recurring kidney ailment, she embraced with aplomb the couple’s folksy receptions day after day, hosting tens of thousands of visitors. This porch-style campaign was actually pioneered by another Ohio couple, the McKinleys, in 1896, but Ida McKinley’s own devastating illness kept her mostly behind the scenes. Even so, supporters circulated a biography of Ida — such was her importance to her husband’s success.
Eleanor Roosevelt called for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unprecedented third nomination during the 1940 Democratic Convention, at the beginning of World War II. Pat Nixon called for her husband’s nomination at the Republican Convention in 1972 in the midst of another war, though the thundering claps of boorish delegates largely silenced her. A standout example of first lady campaigning, of course, was the 1964 solo…
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