Melania Laughed at Trump Campaign Efforts for Her to Appear at Events—Book

First lady Melania Trump reportedly laughed at President Donald Trump’s campaign efforts for her to appear at events, according to journalist Michael Wolff’s latest book, All or Nothing.

Why It Matters

Amid Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, Melania largely stayed out of the public eye. She missed several important events, including his Super Tuesday primary election victory party and was absent from the courtroom amid his legal cases such as his criminal hush money trial in New York.

Her absence came as there has long been speculation about the couple’s relationship as “Where’s Melania?” was a frequent question raised by the media and critics during the campaign.

However, Melania did appear at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee in July and spoke out following an assassination attempt that was made on her husband at a Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally. In October, she made a rare appearance at her husband’s Madison Square Garden rally where she called his supporters “the heartbeat of this great metropolis.” On election night, she joined Trump onstage for his victory speech in West Palm Beach, Florida.

What To Know

Wolff, who has written a number of critical books about the president, wrote in his upcoming book, All or Nothing, about the Republican’s 2024 election campaign and how Melania had remained out of the public eye during that time.

In one excerpt, Wolff described a moment in which Melania allegedly laughed at the campaign’s effort “to get her to accompany her husband.”

The excerpt read: “Since the first indictment in New York, when Melania had simply laughed at the campaign’s effort to get her to accompany her husband (‘Nice try’), it had been clear that she wasn’t going to show up. During the past year, she had yet to make a single campaign appearance. In only one instance in 2023 did she even appear on the plane—and then only hitching a ride. Magically, the Melania issue had not, in the White House years nor the Mar-a-Lago years—with both staffers and press quite aware of the Trumps’ nontraditional living arrangements and their careful distance from each other— become an issue.”

In another excerpt, Wolff noted the “Where’s Melania?” question ahead of Trump’s first assassination attempt.

“Melania continued to be an additional freak-out, absolutely refusing every entreaty to speak or even to appear side by side with her husband. He had never faced point-blank questions from the media about their relationship. But what if ‘Where’s Melania?’ started now in earnest? But that was all before the shooting…now the attempt on Trump’s life not only made him again incontrovertibly the central figure of the moment, if not the age, giving him a maximum hero’s electoral mantle, but it also repositioned his convention as the joyous and abject coronation of which he dreamed,” the excerpt read.

The day after the assassination attempt, Melania shared a statement online, urging Americans to unite beyond politics, expressed her condolences to the families of the injured and the deceased, and highlighted Trump’s personal qualities.

The release of All or Nothing follows a period of relative public silence from the first lady who has not been seen since January 24 when she accompanied Trump to a hurricane disaster site in North Carolina. That same day, she was photographed during a tense interaction between Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom after touring wildfire damage.

Despite Trump’s flurry of public activity—including executive orders, meetings with world leaders and attending the Super Bowl—Melania remained absent. Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, attended the Super Bowl on Melania’s behalf, marking the first time a sitting president attended the annual NFL showcase.

The first lady was also notably absent during the president’s signing of the Laken Riley Act into law, as well as during meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. She also didn’t attend a special dinner for Republican senators at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.

Last week, Melania announced that the White House will reopen for public tours as they were paused for her husband’s transition back into the Oval Office.

Is Michael Wolff Credible?

Some critics have questioned the accuracy of some of Wolff’s previous claims about Trump and the Trump administration. Arkansas’ Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who served as White House press secretary under Trump from 2017 to 2019, said that Wolff’s previous book Fire and Fury contained “mistake after mistake after mistake.”

She questioned Wolff’s integrity, saying, “I think you have to look at this author’s track record,” and referred to the book as “tabloid gossip” and “full of lies.”

Wolff responded that he has recordings and notes and stands by “absolutely everything in the book.”

What People Are Saying

Trump White House’s communications director Steven Cheung told Newsweek on Saturday: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of sh** and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

Ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Melania Trump told Fox News that she gives her own advice to her husband but admitted that he does not always listen to it.

“I don’t always agree [with] what my husband is saying or doing, and that’s ok,” she told host Ainsley Earhardt. “I give him my advice, and sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t.”

Commenting on her first four years as first lady, she added: “I just feel that people didn’t accept me maybe, they didn’t understand me the way maybe they do now. And I didn’t have much support. Maybe some people see me as just a wife of the president, but I’m standing on my own two feet, independent, I have my own thoughts, I have my own ‘yes’ and ‘no.'”

What Happens Next?

Wolff’s book All or Nothing is to be released on February 25.