Caption: Melania Trump ‘to skip traditional tea with outgoing First Lady Jill Biden’Getty/Shutterstock
Soon-to-be first lady again, Melania Trump, is reportedly skipping a traditional tea meeting with her outgoing counterpart, Jill Biden.
It has long been US custom for the first lady to host tea with her successor in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House as part of the transition. Jill extended the invitation to Melania last week, while President Joe Biden invited former and President-elect Donald Trump to the Oval Office.
‘The Bidens extended congratulations and a joint invite to the Trumps to meet at the White House,’ stated Jill’s office.
But Melania is apparently snubbing Jill and will not go along with her husband to the White House to meet the Bidens at 11am on Wednesday.
‘Mrs Trump is not going, and they have not spoken,’ a source told the Daily Mail on Monday afternoon.
Sources told CNN on Monday that Melania has a prior scheduling conflict around her recently released, self-titled memoir. One of the sources added that her decision was not yet final.
There had been discussions to try to encourage Melania to attend the meeting as some members of her husband’s team considered it important, reported the news outlet.
After Vice President Kamala Harris’ landslide loss to Trump in the 2024 election last week, the Bidens quickly agreed to a peaceful transition.
The 100-year-old first ladies tea tradition was broken after decades by Melania in 2020 when she left office without inviting Jill to tour the White House residence.
‘In modern history, there has always been an invitation, this goes back to at least Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower),’ Kate Andersen Brower, author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies’, told USA Today in January 2021.
Now it appears that Melania will blow off her turn to host Jill.
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