(AFP) – US First Lady Melania Trump poked fun Thursday at media speculation over her month away from the public eye and scrutiny over one of President Donald Trump’s close aides. “Good afternoon. I heard you missed me. Here I am,” Melania said with a chuckle as she opened an event in the White House Rose Garden. She and her 80-year-old husband held hands as they walked from the Oval Office to the podium, and the president sat in the audience as Melania spoke.
The event marked a donation by IndyCar and the Fox Corporation to fund university scholarships, ahead of an IndyCar race through the streets of Washington to mark America’s 250th independence anniversary. But all eyes were on 56-year-old Melania, who had last been seen in public at the FIFA World Cup final on July 19. The Slovenian-born former model skipped a number of other major events including the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24, despite having attended the first version in April, which was disrupted by a gunman.
An analysis by US broadcaster NBC on Monday said Melania Trump was keeping a much lower public profile in her second term as first lady, carrying out about half as many public events as she did by this point in her first. Melania’s return to the public eye also came amid speculation about Trump’s hyper-loyal executive assistant Natalie Harp, 35. The White House hit back angrily this week after a Democratic Senate hopeful queried why Harp was one of only a few people to secretly swap from Air Force One with the president in Turkey after a security threat.
Harp has been a near-constant presence at Trump’s side in his second term, sometimes typing out social media posts for him and printing out information, a role that has seen her dubbed the “human printer.” Harp did not appear to be present at the Rose Garden event.
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