First Lady “Part-Time”: Trump Biographer Claims Melania Is Living a Separate Life in New York

Melania Trump may not have spent a single night in the White House since her husband returned to power, according to a sensational claim by presidential biographer Michael Wolff.

In the latest edition of his Howl newsletter on Substack, Wolff wrote that the 56-year-old first lady has been living an almost entirely independent life away from the White House since Donald Trump returned to Pennsylvania Avenue nearly 600 days ago.

“By the end of the campaign, when aides were asked about the situation, they were already actively searching for new ways to describe it: ‘She’s going to be more of a part-time first lady,’” Wolff wrote.

According to the biographer, Melania is now “firmly established in New York,” where she runs her own business under the Melania brand. As Wolff notes, the first lady herself previously revealed that her company generated $17 million in net profit last year.

Michael Wolff, author of the bestselling book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, claims that during the 2024 presidential campaign he tried to find out from Trump’s closest advisers why Melania was rarely seen alongside her husband. The answer, he said, was remarkably blunt.

“‘She hates him with all her heart,’ one of Trump’s senior advisers told me,” Wolff recalled.

In Wolff’s view, that helps explain why the relationship between the president and first lady appears the way it does.

Wolff described Melania’s approach to their marital arrangement as a “particular form of Trump-style pretense.”

“You pretend so little and make such limited effort that everyone understands you’re pretending. And therefore, in reality, you’re no longer pretending at all,” he wrote.

According to Wolff, Trump himself also makes little effort to project an image of marital harmony.

In April, on Melania’s birthday, the president posted a flurry of messages on his social media platform Truth Social — yet none of them included a birthday greeting for his wife.

Melania, the author notes, appeared to return the favor in June, when Trump turned 80.

The couple do occasionally appear together at official events. On Aug. 23, 2026, for example, Trump and Melania attended the national anthem ceremony before the start of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix on the streets of Washington.

Wolff claims that Melania has effectively created a unique model for life as a first lady — staying out of the White House, maintaining significant distance from the president while simultaneously turning the role of first lady into a multimillion-dollar business.

“Melania has managed to achieve what no first lady before her has: not living in the White House — not anywhere near it. Call it whatever you want, but this is a separation, combined with the creation of her own multimillion-dollar business by monetizing the first lady brand,” Wolff wrote.

And in conclusion, the biographer posed what may be the most intriguing question of all:

“Under what terms did she negotiate this deal? And what else has she managed to get?”