Thanks but no thanks: Melania Trump rejects Jill Biden’s invite

Washington: Melania Trump, the former and future first lady, rejected an invitation from the current first lady, Jill Biden, to have tea at the White House and tour the executive mansion — a decision that breaks with a decades-old tradition.

In an unusual statement posted on social media platform X, Trump’s office said she would not be accompanying President-elect Donald Trump to the White House for his meeting on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) with President Joe Biden, a long-time ritual between the current and future presidents that the wives normally attend as well.

Doing things her way: Former and incoming first lady Melania Trump.Credit: AP

“In this instance, several unnamed sources in the media continue to provide false, misleading and inaccurate information,” Trump’s office said in a statement, an apparent explanation for her absence. It was unclear who in the media her office was referring to and what information it objected to.

Her office did, however, sound a note of congratulations to Donald Trump on behalf of his wife. “Her husband’s return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success.”

It is unclear if Melania Trump will move back into the White House with her husband when he takes office in January. During the first term, it took Trump months to move to Washington from Trump Tower in New York. Once she did, she had a fraught relationship with the media, as well as with a number of first lady traditions in the White House, including presiding over the annual Christmas decorations, which she complained about in profane terms.

White House officials said the current first lady, Jill Biden, gave Donald Trump a handwritten letter of congratulations for Melania Trump, which also expressed her team’s readiness to assist with the transition.

Melania Trump’s snub of Biden was a first in modern memory and was particularly striking because the two husbands were meeting after exchanging ugly insults in a bitter campaign.

However, Anita McBride, an expert on first ladies at American University who served as chief of staff to Laura Bush during former president George W. Bush’s second term, gave Trump a pass.

“It’s different this time,” McBride said. “She knows what she’s walking into – doesn’t need a tour. I like to see the tradition upheld, but Mrs Trump has shown us for years she will do things her way and not be burdened by others’ expectations of her. ”

Some of the 77 Christmas trees decorating the White House are on display in Cross Hall. Melania Trump previously complained about having to preside over the decorations.Credit: THE WASHINGTON POST

While Trump has not said why she did not attend tea with Biden, she has been vocal about her anger over the FBI search of her home at the couple’s private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022, in search of classified documents from Donald Trump’s first term.

When Trump was first elected president in 2016, Michelle Obama, then the first lady, hosted her for an awkward tea and a tour at the White House. The two women stepped out on the Truman Balcony with its sweeping views of the grounds and the Washington Monument, strolled through the State Floor with the resident curator, and even talked about raising children at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A photo released by the White House showed them sitting next to each other in gold chairs, speaking in the Yellow Oval Room at the White House residence.

Then first lady Michelle Obama meets Melania Trump for tea in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House on November 10, 2016.Credit: Chuck Kennedy/The White House

But when she and her husband left the White House in 2020, Trump did not reach out to Biden about transition matters. And she and Donald Trump did not invite the Bidens into the White House on Inauguration Day, as has long been the custom.

A person familiar with Biden’s thinking said at the time that since Trump had not conceded to Joe Biden it would not make sense for the two to meet. That person added that Jill Biden knew her way around, anyway. Now the tables are turned. It is Melania Trump who knows her way around.

Trump has not yet outlined how she plans to go about the role in the next administration.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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