Donald Trump has finally commented on the peculiar absence of his wife, Melania Trump, from his 2024 presidential campaign.

In an interview with Meet The Press, Trump explained Melania’s absence as a conscious, strategic choice in order to “keep her out of it,” due to the “nasty and mean” nature of politics.

Melania has used this time to focus on their 17-year-old son, Barron Trump. Trump assured interviewer Kristen Welker that Melania’s support for the campaign has never wavered, and she would be making more appearances “soon, yeah, pretty soon, when it’s appropriate, but pretty soon.”

“She’s very popular, she actually is,” he continued. “She’s a private person — a great person, a very confident person — and she loves our country very much.”

For months, many have been suspicious of Melania’s failure to appear at her husband’s events.

Some wags have taken to social media to speculate on the topic in more humorous ways. Various posts revolve around jokes that Melania needed a vacation from the stress of her husband’s legal troubles, with comments like “Melania Bueller’s Indefinite Day Off” and “The new meaning of MAGA is ‘Melania’s Absence Getting Awkward.'”

At an Iowa-Iowa State college football game last weekend with Trump in attendance, a banner flying from a plane posed the question, “Where’s Melania?” before the game started. 

Although absent from the public eye, Melania hasn’t been entirely MIA – she was sighted a few times over the last year, in New York and on the beach in Florida, sometimes accompanied by her husband or son Barron.

Melania reportedly wants to stay as far away from her husband’s legal problems as possible and lead her own life outside of politics. 

In his interview, Trump denied that he ever asked a staffer to tamper with security footage at his resort, Mar-a-Lago, and declared he would testify under oath. He then called Special Counsel Jack Smith a “deranged lunatic prosecutor.” Smith currently oversees the documents investigation and the federal case against Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and remain president. Trump claims these to be “false charges.”

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