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Biographer Michael Wolff has claimed that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are essentially “separated” following reports that she has spent less than two weeks at the White House since the president’s inauguration.
Wolff, who has authored several books highly critical of the president over the years, made the remarks Tuesday on The Daily Beast Podcast.
“They clearly do not in any way inhabit a marriage as we define marriage,” Wolff said in response to host Joanna Coles’s question as to what extent the first lady is involved in Trump’s second administration.
“And I think maybe we can more specifically say they live separate lives,” Wolff continued. “They are separated. The president of the United States and the first lady are separated.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung said that Wolff was “a blithering idiot” who has been “widely discredited due to his blatant lies and fabrications” in response to the author’s comments when approached by The Independent.
“He is an imbecile of the highest order and his Trump Derangement Syndrome-addled brain has caused him to lead a miserable existence devoid of reality,” Cheung said.
Speculation surrounding the state of the couple’s marriage has been rife given Melania’s infrequent appearances at the White House.
Since Trump returned to office on January 20, Melania is estimated to have spent less than 14 days at the White House, according to The New York Times. That estimate might be “generous,” the outlet reported, citing sources.
The first lady has made a handful of appearances in recent months beside her husband, including attending the funeral of the late Pope Francis the day before her 55th birthday and the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn.
When the president and first lady arrived back in the U.S. after the funeral on Melania’s birthday, the couple went their separate ways, with Melania leaving in a car while the president boarded Marine One.
In a sit-down interview with Fox & Friends ahead of the inauguration, Melania gave some insight into how she would approach being first lady the second time around.
“I will be in the White House,” she said when asked where she planned to spend most of her time. “And, you know, when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach.”
Her priority, she said, was “to be a mom” to Barron, now 19, and, “to be a first lady, to be a wife.”
Two people familiar with the first lady’s thinking told the Times that she has been “deeply spooked” by the two assassination attempts on Trump’s life last summer. Melania “was already worried about her family’s safety and had been for years,” they told the newspaper.
Paolo Zampolli, the former modeling agent who first spotted Melania in Milan in 1995 and introduced her to Trump at New York’s Kit Kat Club in 1998, said that claims about the first lady’s absence from the White House were misleading.
“She loves the White House,” said Zampolli, the incumbent U.S. special representative for global partnerships. “And she loves the role of serving as our first lady.”
English (US) ·