President Donald Trump poked fun at his wife as he jetted off on another international trip with his adoring aide by his side.
Trump, 80, was accompanied by his “human printer” Natalie Harp, 35, on a trip to Ireland to meet with business leaders and attend the Irish Open golf tournament at his Doonbeg resort.
In remarks at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Dublin, the president quipped that First Lady Melania Trump, 56, wanted to be there with him but opted out of the seven-hour flight from Washington, D.C.
“My wife is here in spirit. She’s watching right now. She said, ‘Say hello,’ because she was very friendly with these two people. I said, ‘Well, why don’t you come with me?’ She said, ‘Well, it’s a seven-hour trip. Maybe I’m not that friendly,’” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
“I said, ‘Put on a Make America Great Again hat and come on. Let’s go.’ But, uh, she sends her regards,” he added.
A Daily Beast analysis of the first lady’s schedule previously found that she has a shockingly lighter workload than her predecessors, Jill Biden and Michelle Obama.
By the end of July, Melania had only made 38 public appearances. In stark contrast, Michelle gave 130 speeches, and Jill delivered 43 in the same 18-month period after moving into the White House.
Melania reemerged in the public eye in late August to celebrate the expansion of her Fostering the Future initiative.
“I heard you missed me. Here I am,” she said with a laugh at the time. “Here I am! Welcome to the White House.”
Meanwhile, Harp is dutifully by Trump’s side through every engagement, whether it’s a round of golf or an overseas trip.
Harp, a one-time anchor and host at the right-wing news network One America News, began working for Trump in 2022. She earned the moniker “human printer” by following Trump around, fulfilling his every request, including fetching merchandise, performing Google searches, printing stories from right-wing websites, and suggesting possible Truth Social posts. She earns a taxpayer-funded salary of $150,000 a year.
Melania’s camp has insisted there is no bad blood between her and Harp, despite reports of the first lady being frustrated by the intense media coverage of Harp and her proximity to Trump.
“They don’t know anything about the first lady’s personal and private life,” Melania’s spokesman Marc Beckman previously said.
“What they need to do is look in the mirror because they’re all attacking this hardworking, very talented, very intelligent person in Natalie Harp,” he said.
Melania has appeared to spend less and less time at the White House in her husband’s second term, with reports suggesting she instead divides her time between New York and Florida. Michael Wolff, Trump’s longtime biographer, has claimed it’s an open secret that the first lady leads a life completely separate from her husband.
