First lady Melania Trump’s absence from the White House in her husband’s second term has made her husband more unhinged, the president’s former adviser Anthony Scaramucci has claimed.
Speaking on the Daily Beast Podcast, Scaramucci, who infamously only lasted 11 days in the first Trump administration, discussed the most stunning difference between the two Trump presidencies: that Trump no longer has his family lingering in the background of the White House.
He noted that now Trump has “nobody in there,” especially as Melania has been noticeably absent from the public eye in his second term. The Daily Beast reported that she has been seen in public just 47 times in 2025 after the president’s Jan. 20 inauguration, and then just 38 days in the first seven months of 2026.
Asked by host Joanna Coles how his family’s absence has affected him this time around, Scaramucci said Trump has grown noticeably more emboldened without Melania there to rein him in.
“When she was more friendly with him, she would tell him to tone it down and he would actually listen to her,” he said, adding, “There’s very few people that Trump listens to.”
Scaramucci said it appears that their relationship is now “distant.”
“I think it’s distant for a number of different reasons,” he said. “But I think they probably have grown apart.”
Scaramucci said the Trump family weren’t keen to return to D.C. after their experience during the first Trump administration,
“The family unit that came into Trump 1.0 didn’t like it,” Scaramucci explained. “They didn’t like the blistering in Washington. They didn’t like the 360-degree firing squad. I don’t think they like the spotlight that was put on them.”
“I think that when he ran again, they all more or less said, ‘okay, that, you know, that one was on all of us; this one’s on you,’” he said.
But he said ultimately, Trump “didn’t care” that they wouldn’t join him for his second act in the White House
“He’s there without his family. And I was surprised by that, by the way. I would have said, this is going to be hard for him because he does everything with his family and they are not in the mix with him,” he added.
The White House did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment on Melania’s absence.
“It’s pretty clear that they’re not living together,” Scaramucci said.
“And I think it was probably pretty clear to the journalists in Trump 1.0 that they weren’t living together. But that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to show up and be friendly and she’s not going to do certain things,” he continued.
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