Future First Lady Melania Trump will not be attending a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on Wednesday, her office confirmed, with the White House confirming that first lady Jill Biden gave the president-elect a handwritten letter intended for Melania.
Over the past weekend, multiple rumors emerged on social media and in news outlets that she would not be attending a meeting with First Lady Jill Biden due to an FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in August 2022 for classified documents.
However, her office’s statement, posted on social media platform X, appeared to refute those claims.
“In this instance, several unnamed sources in the media continue to provide false, misleading, and inaccurate information,” her office said. “Be discerning with your source of news.”
The statement did not elaborate on why she would not be attending the event, which will be the first meeting between Trump and Biden since the president-elect won the 2024 election last week.
The White House said in a statement that First Lady Biden joined President Biden in greeting the president-elect upon his arrival to the White House on Wednesday morning. She gave Trump a handwritten letter of congratulations for Melania Trump, which expressed her team’s willingness to assist with the transition.
Since leaving the White House in January 2021, Melania Trump has kept a relatively low profile and did not attend many of her husband’s campaign events and rallies, but she started making more campaign appearances after her husband survived an assassination attempt in mid-July at a Pennsylvania rally.
In multiple interviews with the media, she has said she backs her husband’s 2024 campaign for the presidency. About a week before the Nov. 5 election, Melania delivered remarks at a Trump campaign event held in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, the first such event she attended during this year’s campaign cycle.
“Let us charge together with a shared vision that builds on American greatness. Let’s seize this moment and create a country for tomorrow—the future that we deserve,” Melania said at the event.
She also stood on stage and embraced Trump as he made his arrival for his speech.
And last month, she made an appearance alongside her husband at the Al Smith charity dinner in New York City. She did not address the crowd.
She also released a memoir in October that described her feelings when she witnessed the July assassination attempt in which her husband was shot in the ear.
“I watched the chaos unfold: the gunfire, Donald instinctively reaching up to his head, and the immediate response of Secret Service agents shielding him,“ she wrote in her book, titled ”Melania.“ After “what felt like an eternity,” she wrote, she finally spoke with her husband.
“Each time we saw Donald’s bloodied face, I had to remind myself that I had actually just spoken to him,” she said.
The present-elect and future first lady’s son, Barron Trump, who turned 18 this year, is now attending New York University. It’s not clear if he will spend time at the White House.
Trump–Biden Meeting
On Wednesday afternoon, Biden met with Trump at the White House for an Oval Office visit. It’s a traditional part of the peaceful handoff of power.Trump met with congressional Republicans as they focus on his Day 1 priorities and prepare for a potentially unified government with a GOP sweep of power in the nation’s capital.
Last week, President Biden delivered a White House speech that called on Americans to lower “the temperature” around the election, adding that his office is prepared to hand over the presidency.
The new Congress will be sworn in about two weeks before Trump takes office on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. The current Congress will certify the 2024 election result on Jan. 6, 2025.
