First lady keeps her D.C. entry low-key
Not that she hasn’t been busy fulfilling her duties as first lady and first mom.
Her top priority has been settling in 11-year-old son Barron — the first boy in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. more than 50 years ago. Even the smallest details of recent Barron sightings have drawn interest: his T-shirt reading “The Expert,” his grasp on a popular fidget spinner toy as he exited Air Force One, his pivot to take a picture of the Marine One helicopter as the family returned from a Father’s Day weekend retreat at Camp David.
Mrs. Trump told “Fox and Friends” recently that she’s enjoying White House life so much that she doesn’t really miss New York. Barron is “all settled” and “loves it here,” she said.
The first lady has played host to her counterpart from Panama for a lunch upstairs in the private quarters of the White House. She also accompanied President Donald Trump to the hospital to visit Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise and others who were shot at a baseball practice, and she helped plan a picnic on the White House lawn for members of Congress.
She’s also preparing to accompany the president to Poland and Germany after the Fourth of July. Questions remain, though, about what kind and how social a first lady Trump will be. Will she dine out at the city’s trendiest restaurants? Pedal up a sweat at SoulCycle spinning classes? Try to go incognito on a Target shopping run?
Even the president has described his third wife, a 47-year-old former model and native of Slovenia, as more happy at home than working the social scene. “She would go home at night and didn’t even want to go out with people,” he said of her life in New York. “She was a very private person.”
Melania Trump and Barron continued to live at Trump Tower after the Jan. 20 inauguration so he could finish the school year in New York. The first lady announced their June 11 move to Washington with a tweet. “Looking forward to the memories we’ll make in our new home! #Movingday,” she wrote on a photo of the Washington Monument as seen from a White House window.
Spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said Trump has been and will continue to be an active first lady. But she “is taking some time to get Barron settled into his new home and she continues to be thoughtful and deliberate about her platform.” Trump said during the campaign that she would work as first lady to combat cyberbullying. She has made no further announcements about her plans.
She also needs to hire more staff, including a lead curator to help chronicle White House history and preserve its artifacts. She filled the chief usher’s position this month with an employee from the Trump hotel down the street.
Like some presidents, first ladies complain about the constraints of White House life even as they cope with Secret Service agents guarding them around the clock. Michelle Obama once jokingly described the mansion as a “really nice prison.” But it’s much easier for first ladies than presidents to venture out in public because they travel with far less security and staff.
Hillary Clinton said she walked around town wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses and sweat clothes and required the members of her security detail to try to blend in with tourists. Laura Bush went shopping in Georgetown. Obama was often seen dining at the city’s hottest restaurants with President Barack Obama or her friends, or working up a sweat at exercise classes. She once made a Target run hiding behind dark glasses and a baseball cap.
Kathy Hollinger, president and CEO of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, said the industry’s hope with every new administration is that the president, White House staff and their families will dine out frequently.
The president dines out occasionally when he’s in Washington — but so far only at his hotel near the White House. Melania Trump has eaten there, too.
Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian with the National First Ladies’ Library, said Melania Trump may not find White House life to be all that confining.
She traded life in an expansive, three-story Trump Tower penthouse for a 132-room mansion with a bowling alley, outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, gardens and “a lot of spaces that would allow her full privacy both indoors and outdoors,” he said. “It’s just hard to imagine that it’s going to be frustrating.”