Former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews has claimed that Melania Trump only shows up for her husband when paid—and her rate may have just gone up.
Matthews, 31, spoke on MeidasTouch’s On Sunday with Jack Cocchiarella podcast and painted a picture of a very clocked-out first lady.
“When I was working on the campaign for a year and then at the White House for the last seven months of the first admin, I met the vice president, I met almost every cabinet official. I met members of the first family; I met all of them at one point or another. The only person I never met was Melania Trump,” she said.
Matthews—who resigned from her position following the Jan. 6 riots—repeated: “I never met the first lady, even though I was the deputy spokesperson for the president on his campaign and in the White House.”
“And I think that’s pretty telling,” the ‘Republican in exile’ said.
“That kind of sums it up, where it was this known thing that she was just not around, and she didn’t want to be around.”
Despite Donald Trump’s gaudy attempts to revamp the White House with gold paint, Matthews claimed, “She didn’t want to stay at the White House.
“She thought the White House was old and falling apart, and she wanted to be in New York and do her own thing.”
After more than a month away from the public eye, Melania made a reappearance in the White House Rose Garden earlier this week for a Fostering the Future event, with Matthews saying that foster care was one of the former model’s “passions.”
“But I have to admit that the timing is a little suspect with all of the Natalie Harp things happening in the news...” she mused.
Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant Harp seemed to have made herself scarce during Melania’s grand return, following further revelations of her unusual bond with the president.
Matthews then said: “We know too that—it’s been reported—that Melania gets paid for showing up at events when they were on the campaign trail, which is crazy to think that you have to pay your own wife to show up somewhere.”
The political aide contemplated the Harp controversy: “I wonder if her rate has gone up after all of this news, because I’m sure she doesn’t like any of this being out there—whether or not it’s true.”
A Daily Beast analysis of the rarely spotted Melania found that the first lady appeared publicly once every six days on average, falling to once every 12 days this summer.
The documentary star has delivered 29 public speeches during Trump’s second term, compared with 130 by Michelle Obama during the equivalent period. Melania has not traveled beyond the East Coast since July 2025, while Obama visited all 50 states during her tenure as first lady.
