The former first lady appeared with her husband as former President Donald J. Trump cast his ballot during Florida’s primaries. Asked if she would be a more frequent presence, she said “stay tuned.”
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Melania Trump joined the former president as he voted in Palm Beach, Fla.
When the former president cast his vote in the Florida primary election on Tuesday, the former first lady was by his side.
This was notable for a few reasons.
Former President Donald J. Trump has said for months that his wife, Melania, would join him on the campaign trail. And for months, Mrs. Trump remained absent from campaign events and victory celebrations — after Mr. Trump cruised to a victory on Super Tuesday, his wife did not join him onstage to greet supporters at Mar-a-Lago, their home in Palm Beach, Fla.
Always more content to be a cipher to the curious public than she is to gamely field questions, Mrs. Trump did something out of character when she replied to someone who asked whether she planned to be a more regular presence going forward.
“Stay tuned,” she said.
It was a reply, but not an answer.
(“That’s the answer she gives when she doesn’t want to commit to anything,” Stephanie Grisham, her former communications director who wrote a memoir about the Trump White House, said in a text message.)
Mrs. Trump, 53, has formally been a political spouse for almost a decade, but she has shown little interest in campaigning, despite her popularity as a surrogate for her husband.
Her public appearances in recent months have been sparse, and they have not been in the service of her husband’s campaign.
One of her most notable was to deliver a eulogy for her mother, Amalija Knavs, who died in January. In that rare speech, Mrs. Trump, who was close enough to her mother that Mrs. Knavs and her husband, Viktor, often lived in a suite at the White House, described her mother as “a ray of light in the darkest of days.”
Before that, Mrs. Trump, a naturalized U.S. citizen, attended a naturalization ceremony in December and told participants that citizenship “means actively participating in the democratic process and guarding our freedom.” (Mrs. Trump received an immigrant visa reserved for “individuals with extraordinary ability” in 2001, when she was a model, and the circumstances surrounding her immigration process came under scrutiny when she was first lady.)
And in November, she joined the other living first ladies at a memorial service for the former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump told people gathered outside the polling location in Palm Beach that he had voted for himself. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for information about the former first lady’s vote.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent covering a range of issues, including foreign policy, domestic policy, and the Biden family. Her book, “American Woman,” about first ladies in the White House, will be published in February 2024. She joined The Times in 2014. More about Katie Rogers
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Source: nytimes.com
