Melania Trump has always been an intensely private person and photos of her are becoming increasingly rare. On Tuesday however, one photographer managed to score photos of the former first lady leaving Trump Tower in New York City while questions arise about whether she and Donald Trump still live together and whether they even spent much time together while he was president, The Daily Mail reports.

The Former First Lady FFL begins a new PR campaign. Melania Trump's entourage seen near 5th Avenue in New York https://t.co/SFUFjCYYtq via @MailOnline

— 🎙️Halli Casser-Jayne @Threads.net (@HalliShowQuotes) July 7, 2021

Questions surrounding the couple’s marriage have always been around, but a new book by controversial author Michael Wolff has stirred up another round of new questions.

“For four years in the White House, it was never quite clear how much time she was spending at the White House or in a house in Maryland where she had settled her parents,” Wolff notes in his book, Landslide: The Final Days of The Trump Presidency. In  an excerpt, published by The Sunday Times, he notes “Aides were careful not to closely inquire or openly wonder.”

Wolff reports folks still whether Melania, 51, spent the winter at Mar-a-Lago with her husband because apparently, sightings of her were ghostlike at best. “Here in Mar-a-Lago, it was unclear,” he wrote, referring to Melania’s rare appearances.

CNN reported in April muddied the waters even further when an unnamed source close to the former first couple said “she’s not a presence at Mar-a-Lago at all. She’s not mingling with people and rarely interacts with her husband’s staff.”

Whenever she was on hand at the resort, she’d join her husband for dinner in the dining room, and the couple would sit in an area roped off from other guests, an odd arrangement that made them “looked at, somewhat like zoo animals,” Wolff writes.

Then he seems to reverse himself, noting “No, no, that’s not right. They are like a newly married couple: every night is a wedding at which they spend their dinner greeting friends and well-wishers.”

I’m sure.

Wolff also kicks about the rumor that Melania Trump and son Barron, 15, spent little time at the White House. He suggests mother and son spent much of their time with her Slovenian parents at their home in Maryland. Melania’s refusal to move into the White House during her husband’s first six months as president so that Barron could wrap up his academic year at a Manhattan prep school fueled the rumor further.

Mary Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Washington Post put her own spin on the situation in her book The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, writing that Melania stayed in New York as a way to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement with her husband and to secure Barron’s financial stability.

The Post was one of a number of publications that reported Donald and Melania Trump spent little time together, maintaining separate schedules and sleeping in separate bedrooms at the White House.

“The Trumps are often apart even during their free time, according to several people who know the couple’s schedules,” the Post reported in 2018. “At Mar-a-Lago on holidays and weekends, the president golfs or dines with politicians, business executives, and media personalities on the patio, while Melania is often nowhere to be seen. According to several current and former aides, the president and first lady often do not eat together in the White House either.”

“They spend very little to no time together,” one longtime family friend told the Post.

Over a span of years, I’ve written many articles on Melania Trump and she has always been determinedly private and worked to keep Barron safe from intense scrutiny. I’m not among her fans but I really can’t blame her for this. Her husband is a one-man walking disaster who’s pretty much made up for whatever publicity she isn’t receiving.

I’d stay in the background too.

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