Donald Trump left Washington for a three-day state visit to China flanked by cabinet secretaries, sixteen corporate CEOs, his son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara—but not his wife.
Melania Trump’s office confirmed her absence in an email to the South China Morning Post hours before takeoff, without even attempting to offer an explanation: “First Lady Melania Trump is not travelling this time,” her spokesperson said.
Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why she was sitting out the trip.
The move comes amid speculation about the first lady increasingly breaking with her husband as she seems to be trying to charter her own course. Trump and his White House aides were reportedly blindsided last month when she called a surprise press conference to read a statement declaring she had no ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The move appeared only to revive the scandal that Trump himself had been eager to put to rest.
Melania’s absence, bizarrely, does not appear to have kept the man who produced her critically panned Melania documentary last year from tagging along.
Brett Ratner, better known for directing the Rush Hour movies, reportedly some of the president’s favorites, is thought to have boarded Air Force One to scout locations for a fourth installment in the franchise.
The Melania documentary, backed by MAGA-friendly tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, represented Ratner’s first significant project since 2017, when several women accused him of sexual misconduct. He has denied those claims.
First ladies routinely skip working trips. State visits, less so. Her absence is all the more glaring because it follows a trend that has stood out in Trump’s second term: She’s been appearing alongside him less and less on state visits.
Melania showed up for all six of Trump’s formal outgoing state visits of his first term, including his November 2017 trip to China. But her 100 percent attendance rate back then has now fallen to less than 20 percent just over a year into Trump’s second term.
She skipped Riyadh in May 2025, on a trip the White House itself titled “President Trump Participates in a Saudi State Visit” on its own events page. She also skipped Doha the day after, on a state visit the Qatari foreign ministry described as such, and skipped the UAE the day after that, on a trip described by PBS as “the president’s third state visit in three days.”
So far, in fact, she’s attended only Windsor Castle in September 2025, where King Charles III hosted carriage processions and a banquet in St George’s Hall. One state visit attended, out of five in sixteen months.
Set that against Laura Bush, who attended both of George W. Bush’s formal outgoing state visits to Poland in 2001 and the UK in 2003, for a clean 100 percent attendance.
Or Jill Biden, who dropped only Joe Biden’s Vietnam visit in September 2023 because she had tested positive for COVID.
Michelle Obama skipped three of her husband’s six formal state visits over Barack’s eight years in office. These were China in 2009, Japan in April 2014, and China again that November, with her leaving office at 50 percent attendance.
Melania is set to finish Trump’s second term well beneath that, and well beneath any modern first lady on record, if her current pace holds.
People are noticing, even if some have been less eager to trumpet the pattern than others. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, watching footage of a woman descending the steps of Air Force One in Beijing on Wednesday, loudly proclaimed: “As the first lady comes down the stairs to greet the president.”
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt quickly corrected him to point out the woman was actually their colleague, Lara Trump. Kilmeade lowered his voice and said, “Probably interesting for her.”
