Melania absence exposes new dynamic making Trump more unstable: ex-official

President Donald Trump reacts next to Melania Trump during a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY, October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

First Lady Melania Trump's glaring absence from the public eye has exposed a grim new dynamic for President Donald Trump, as one of his former officials told The Daily Beast, one that is making his behavior more and more unstable.

Over the weekend, the Daily Beast released an extensive "audit" of the first lady's schedule of public appearances throughout 2026, finding that she has only appeared at official events or been spotted in public less than 40 times this year, with her 2025 schedule also being notably scarce.

Speaking with the outlet for a recent podcast episode, Anthony Scaramucci, the infamously short-lived White House press secretary from Trump's first term, said that this situation with his wife exposes a grim wider reality of his second term: the president is no longer as close with his family as he used to be. Scaramucci observed that he appears to have "nobody in there," in comparison to his first term, and argued that the distance from his wife in particular has made him more erratic and unstable.

“When she was more friendly with him, she would tell him to tone it down and he would actually listen to her,” he explained. “There’s very few people that Trump listens to.”

He added, speaking about the couple's relationship: "I think it’s distant for a number of different reasons, but I think they probably have grown apart."

Scaramucci further noted that Trump's family was not fond of the experience they had in Washington, D.C., when they accompanied Trump during his first term, leading them to avoid it more upon his return. Beyond his wife, Trump's sons have been more preoccupied with their business ventures, while his oldest daughter, Ivanka, has kept her distance, reportedly out of concern for the reputational damage her association with his first term caused her.

"The family unit that came into Trump 1.0 didn’t like it,” Scaramucci continued. “They didn’t like the blistering in Washington. They didn’t like the 360-degree firing squad. I don’t think they like the spotlight that was put on them. I think that when he ran again, they all more or less said, ‘okay, that, you know, that one was on all of us; this one’s on you."

Despite the impact on his behavior, Scaramucci also suggested that Trump "didn't care" about his family's decision not to accompany him to Washington this time around, though it was still a surprise to see.

"He’s there without his family. And I was surprised by that, by the way. I would have said, this is going to be hard for him because he does everything with his family and they are not in the mix with him."

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