Melania Trump absent as Trump praises her foster care work at Rose Garden event
Key Takeaways
- •Melania Trump has made foster care one of her main causes since the president’s first term.
- •Her efforts included the “Be Best” initiative and a later scholarship program for youth aging out of foster care.
- •President Trump praised her work at a Monday Rose Garden event, but she was not present.
- •Melania Trump has been largely absent from public view in recent months, aside from a speech last week and a Sunday appearance with the president.
- •Trump also used the event to repeat claims about women’s sports, vaccines, autism and shrinking the Department of Education.
President Donald Trump delivered remarks in the Rose Garden on Monday praising first lady Melania Trump's work on improving the foster care system.
Foster care has been one of the first lady's signature issues since the president's first term, when it became a focus of her "Be Best" initiative and she hosted events at the White House involving foster youth. After leaving office, she launched "Fostering the Future," a grant program that funded scholarships for young people aging out of the foster care system, and she wrote about the topic in her 2024 memoir, "Melania."
One notable detail, however, was that the first lady was not present to receive the praise.
"President Trump at education event ... highlights the hard work on foster care issues by First Lady Melania Trump, who is absent," Garrett Haake, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, posted to X.
Melania Trump, whose relationship with the president has been the subject of speculation among biographers and Washington insiders since Donald Trump's first term in office, has been largely out of public view for months. She has also spent time in New York, where her son Barron is enrolled at New York University.
She made a public speech last week following widespread reporting about Trump's unusual relationship with top White House aide Natalie Harp, and she and the president were seen in a heated discussion at the IndyCar street race in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. Aside from those appearances, she has remained mostly out of sight.
During the education event, Trump also veered into several other topics. He boasted that he had stopped men from competing in women's sports, promoted his executive order on vaccines and repeated the claim that it would reduce autism rates, which runs counter to decades of scientific research finding no link between vaccines and autism, and again touted his efforts to scale back the Department of Education.
