Incoming first lady Melania Trump is breaking with tradition and will not meet with current first lady Jill Biden ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, though he will be meeting with President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Traditionally, when the outgoing president meets with the incoming president-elect in the Oval Office, the first lady hosts her successor for tea in the residence, DailyMail.com reported.
After the 2016 election, Michelle Obama hosted Melania Trump for tea in the Yellow Room. However, following the contentious 2020 race, Melania Trump did not meet with Jill Biden after the 45th president claimed that the election was stolen.
Melania and Jill have yet to speak following Kamala Harris’ disappointing loss, despite their husbands having a cordial phone call, sources confirm, DailyMail.com noted.
“Mrs. Trump is not going, and they have not spoken,” a source told the outlet.
The last time Jill Biden and Melania Trump likely saw each other was at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in November of last year, where all living former first ladies were in attendance.
There have been several reports suggesting that Melania Trump plans to take a more part-time role as first lady during her husband’s second term and may not reside at the White House full-time. She has yet to announce any specific agenda or make staff appointments.
Melania’s refusal to meet with Jill Biden comes after Joe Biden’s outrageous claims about Donald Trump personally and his supporters ahead of the election. It also comes after Biden’s Justice Department indicted Trump twice over the past 18 months, making Trump the first former president to be charged with crimes.
While some surrogates for Vice President Kamala Harris are blaming her historic loss to Trump on President Joe Biden’s late exit from the race, a bevy of former campaign staffers say that thinking is “detached from reality.”
Rather, the loss should be blamed on the candidate herself and her inability to appear authentic to and connect with a majority of voters.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, a Harris supporter who sought the 2020 Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
But, as noted by Newsweek, other critics say that Harris bears the blame herself for the decisions she made on the campaign trail.
Philadelphia Democratic Chair and former congressman Bob Brady said many of Harris’s staffers were “just elitist and went out there, did their own thing and didn’t include Democratic city committee or (ward leaders) or committee people. They just didn’t do it.”
Kamala Harris had:
• 3× the money
• 80% of the legacy media
• 99% of Hollywood
• 100% of federal institutionsSo please, stop it with all the nonsense about how Elon Musk supposedly interfered with the election.
— ALEX (@ajtourville) November 10, 2024
Some campaign members believe that the leaders are unaware of what went wrong, according to Axios, which cited a memo to staff stating that the race was very close.
“People are depressed and frustrated about the overconfident leadership of the campaign,” said a staffer, who was not identified by Axios.
During a Thursday night all-staff call, there was noticeable dissonance, with Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon reportedly in tears and Harris herself reportedly saying: “Yeah, this sucks … There’s also so much good that has come of this.”
“It was detached from the reality of what happened,” a staffer Axios did not name said. “We are told the fate of democracy is at stake, and then the message was, ‘We’ll get them next time.’”
Another Biden staffer pushed back on the accusation that he left the race too late and put the onus back on Harris and her team: “How did you spend $1 billion and not win?” the staffer asked.
“The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost, so now the people who represent Biden are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him,’” a Biden supporter told Axios anonymously.