First lady Melania Trump is one of the few people in President Donald Trump‘s orbit who appears to operate largely on her own terms.The first lady has pursued a small number of carefully selected priorities during her husband’s second administration, making public appearances when she chooses. That independence has sometimes benefited the president and sometimes created headaches for his aides.“When it comes to Melania Trump, the assessment is rather simplistic,” Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff during the first administration, told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t believe you can say she is being ‘underutilized’ because she decides what she does and when, period.”
Grisham, who departed the first administration after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, contended the first lady “does things when she deems them important, regardless of whether they benefit the West Wing.”
“I’m sure she and her team feel they are being strategic, but from an outside perspective it doesn’t always seem to be the case,” she said.
That independence was on display Tuesday when Melania Trump appeared at the White House to present awards for her Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge, a program one Trump administration official described to Politico as the “carrot to the stick” of the president’s broader AI agenda.
