Melania Snubs Jill Biden, Will Skip Traditional White House Meeting

Incoming First Lady Melania Trump has decided to break with tradition by not meeting current First Lady Jill Biden before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, though Trump will still meet with President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

Typically, when the outgoing president and incoming president-elect meet in the Oval Office, the first lady hosts her successor for tea at the White House residence, as reported by DailyMail.com. After the 2016 election, Michelle Obama invited Melania Trump for tea in the Yellow Room. However, following the contentious 2020 election, Melania did not meet with Jill Biden after President Trump alleged that the election was “stolen.”

According to DailyMail.com, sources confirm that Melania and Jill Biden have not spoken since Kamala Harris’s recent electoral defeat, though their husbands shared a cordial phone conversation. “Mrs. Trump is not going, and they have not spoken,” a source revealed.

The last time Jill Biden and Melania Trump likely saw each other was at former First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s funeral last November, where all living former first ladies were present.

Reports indicate that Melania Trump might take on a part-time role as first lady during Trump’s second term, with the possibility of not residing at the White House full-time. She has not yet revealed any specific agenda or made staff appointments.

Melania’s decision not to meet Jill Biden follows claims made by Joe Biden about Trump and his supporters, as well as two indictments brought by Biden’s Justice Department against Trump over the past 18 months, marking Trump as the first former president to face criminal charges.

While some Vice President Kamala Harris surrogates attribute her recent loss to President Biden’s delayed departure from the race, many former campaign staffers have pushed back, calling this “detached from reality.” Rather, they believe Harris herself failed to connect authentically with voters.

“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, a Harris supporter and 2020 Democratic candidate, as reported by the Associated Press. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”

However, as Newsweek noted, other critics argue that Harris’s own campaign choices led to the loss. Philadelphia Democratic Chair Bob Brady said that many of Harris’s staff were “elitist” and did not engage with local Democratic leaders.

According to Axios, some campaign staff feel that leaders were out of touch, with a memo stating that the race was close. “People are depressed and frustrated about the overconfident leadership of the campaign,” said an unnamed staffer.

During an all-staff call on Thursday night, tensions surfaced. Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon was reportedly in tears, while Harris herself admitted, “Yeah, this sucks … There’s also so much good that has come of this.”

One Biden staffer rejected claims that his late exit hurt the campaign, suggesting instead that Harris and her team bear responsibility: “How did you spend $1 billion and not win?” asked the staffer.

Another Biden supporter, speaking to Axios anonymously, added, “The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost. Now Biden’s supporters are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him.’”