First Lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance at the White House on Thursday, telling the crowd that “the robots are here” and that it is “our responsibility to prepare America’s children” for the AI-driven decades ahead.
“Our future is no longer science fiction,” she said. “During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children – empowering, but with watchful guidance.”
The event – a meeting of a White House AI education task force established earlier this year – was one of so far only a handful of public events for a first lady who has proven both elusive and influential since her husband returned to the White House.
Born Melanija Knavs in Slovenia, the 55-year-old first lady and former fashion model was, for a time, often described as an “enigma” – less public than her predecessors, with fewer speeches and public engagements.
Her relative absence during long stretches of her husband’s ultimately successful 2024 campaign even prompted a flurry of news articles with headlines asking “Where is Melania?”.
Sightings of Mrs Trump are infrequent at the White House, and she reportedly spends much of her time in New York and Florida.
But since the start of the second administration in January, Mrs Trump has taken what some have described as a more active – and focused – approach to a role that is largely undefined and that morphs from administration to administration.
Much of her attention has been on children, building on a previous “Be Best” initiative created during Mr Trump’s first term, which focused on well-being and combated cyberbullying and opioid abuse.
In addition to her recent work on AI, she was instrumental in pushing through the Take It Down Act which criminalised posting “intimate images” – real or AI-generated – online without an individual’s consent.
The bill received rare bipartisan support among deeply divided US lawmakers.
In a first for a first lady, she co-signed a piece of legislation into law when she joined her husband on stage to sign the bill.
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, a professor at Case Western Reserve University and historian who focuses on first ladies, told the BBC that while “it’s not unusual” for those in the role to focus on young people, Mrs Trump has taken a different tack.
“First ladies do usually focus on realms that are seen as more feminine, such as children and education. Things that have been historically gendered,” she said. “What is maybe unusual with Melania is her approach.”
“It’s not coming from the motherly, feminine side of it,” Ms Rabinovitch-Fox added. “But more from the business side of it.”
As an example, Ms Rabinovitch-Fox noted that the Take It Down Act was heavily focused on the platforms that host revenge porn, requiring that they remove any illicit content within 48 hours or penalising them if they fail to act.
And while focused on education, Thursday’s White House event saw Mrs Trump not surrounded by young people, but by cabinet members, administration officials and representatives of private sector heavyweights such as IBM and Google.
Anita McBride, the director of American University’s First Ladies Initiative – and one-time chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush – said that such events demonstrate a key change for Mrs Trump when compared to her first term.
“There are outside players that are willing to work with her, that maybe did not want to work with her before,” she said. “[Some organisations] were reluctant to meet her the first time around. She had a hard time convening roundtables. She did not have a strong structure around her.”
By focusing her efforts on the technological, business and legislative aspects of education and protecting children, Ms McBride said that Mrs Trump “adds an element of urgency” around fast-moving emerging technologies.
“She can now use the platform effectively, with value and substance,” she added. “She can be a player in actually helping legislation get passed.”
President Trump has also said the first lady has offered scepticism of previous conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to whom she penned a letter in August saying it was “time to protect children and future generations worldwide”.
The letter – and her focus on children – did not go unnoticed. In the weeks that followed, she received letters from both Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska and Turkish First Lady Emine Erdogan.
Mrs Trump’s letter was not without precedent, and other first ladies have also taken a role in helping shape US foreign policy.
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, for example, famously exchanged letters with Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife Raisa, and others, such as Pat Nixon and Rosalyn Carter, travelled the world for humanitarian reasons and shuttle diplomacy.
Ms McBride said that Mrs Trump’s letter to Putin, however, demonstrates that while perhaps less visible than some of her predecessors, she is willing to engage on the topics that are of particular interest to her.
“She was born in a country that was under Soviet influence, and has a level of sensitivity that maybe others don’t have,” she said. “She doesn’t have to be present on everything, but wants to be present on issues that are more connected to her interests, and where she can make a difference.”
Looking forward to the next three years of the administration, Ms McBride said she believes Mrs Trump will continue to be extremely selective about where she weighs in as first lady.
“She does it on her terms,” she said. “She’s about quality, not quantity. She’s not going to be constrained by how anyone else in the past has done the role.”
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