Reports: Melania Trump not moving into White House in January
View photos
Melania
Trump and son Barron watch as President-elect Donald Trump delivers his
victory speech on election night. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images)
When
Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States in
Washington on Friday, Jan. 20, his family, including his wife, Melania
Trump, and their young son, Barron, will undoubtedly be by his side. But
come that Monday, it appears they won’t be staying with him in the
White House.
The New York Post and TMZ.com
report that the 46-year-old future first lady and the couple’s
10-year-old son will not make the move to the nation’s capital and will
instead remain at Trump Tower in New York City to allow Barron to
continue attending private school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
According
to the Post, Melania “will travel to the White House as needed” and
“her primary focus is on Barron.” The two may make the move to
Washington after the end of the school year, the paper added, but
currently “no plans are in place.”
A spokeswoman for the president-elect did not return a request seeking comment.
Jason
Miller, communications director for the Trump transition team, told
reporters that while the team had no formal statement on the matter,
“there’s obviously a sensitivity” around the issue of pulling Barron out
of school in the middle of the academic year.
Asked
about the Post’s report outside his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.,
Trump said both Melania and Barron would be joining him in the White
House “very soon — after he’s finished with school.”
But Trump himself may not spend all of his time in the White House, either.
View photos
Donald, Barron and Melania Trump (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Last week, the New York Times reported
that the real estate mogul had been “talking with his advisers about
how many nights a week he will spend in the White House,” reportedly
telling them he would like to spend as much time in New York City as he
can.
“Mr.
Trump, who was shocked when he won the election, might spend most of
the week in Washington, much like members of Congress, and return to
Trump Tower or his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., or his Mar-a-Lago
estate in Palm Beach on weekends,” the Times reported.
President Trump’s whereabouts on the weekends are important, and not just for the press pool.
Security
around Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan has been heightened since the
election, with lane closures and barriers snarling traffic on a busy
stretch of Fifth Avenue.
And
even if Trump doesn’t make Trump Tower his weekend White House,
security will likely remain heightened throughout his presidency and
beyond.
As
the New York Post noted, Melania and Barron “will each have an unknown
number of Secret Service agents assigned to them in addition to a driver
and armored vehicle to take Barron to school.” And “an advance team of
agents will swoop down on the school each morning to make sure it’s
safe.”
“It is an unprecedented challenge,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference Friday.
“In the modern world, with the security dynamics we face today, we have
never had a president of the United States who would be here on such a
regular basis.”
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