Melania Trumpplans to start an office in Palm Beach, Florida, in part to “maintain ‘Be Best,’ “according to a CNN reportdays after she left the White House.
The former first lady’s"Be Best” initiativewas her signature undertaking during husbandDonald Trump’s presidency — focusing (some said hypocritically) on children’s welfare issues, such as cyberbullying, though it was also criticized for being thin on specific solutions.
CNN reports that Mrs. Trump’s post-White House staff will include three familiar staffers: Hayley D’Antuono, who previously served as her director of operations and trip supervisor; Mary Finzer, who previously managed Trump’s “gift closet;” and Marcia Kelly, a former unpaid senior adviser in the White House.
Sources told the network that the team will first work remotely and out of the Trumps' private Mar-a-Lago Club, though the former first lady, 50, is looking for a separate office space in Palm Beach.
Earlier this week, President Trump, 74, announced the launch of his own post-White House “office,” with an email blast to reporters promising future updates on his political work. Other details were not released.
Since arriving in Palm Beach, the Trumps have largely kept a low profile. The former president’s favorite social media platforms previously banned him in the wake of the Capitol insurrection.
President Trump is also preparing for his unprecedented second impeachment trial next month and, earlier this week, met with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a show of his continuing relevance to the conservative base.
Melania Trump.SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty
The use agreement he signed after he converted his former residence into the private club stated that no members would stay there for longer than seven days at a time.
But even a cursory review of President Trump’s travel in recent years shows he has flouted that rule multiple times.
A group of Palm Beach residents has lobbied local officials to examine the issue.
“It’s a legal matter. It’s a contract,” Palm Beach Town Manager Kirk Blouin told PEOPLE this week. “We have attorneys that prepared [the use agreement] for the town … obviously it was prepared many, many years ago. So because it’s a legal matter, it is being reviewed.”
From left: Melania Trump and Donald Trump exit Air Force One at the Palm Beach International Airport on the way to their Mar-a-Lago Club not long before Joe Biden is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.Noam Galai/Getty
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff— a close aide to the first lady in the East Wing before being dismissed in 2018, after which she spoke scathingly about the family and said she had been scapegoated — told PEOPLE last year that “Be Best” could have been a far richer project focused on children’s needs.
“She [the first lady] had the scientific evidence-based research in her hands and her office took it, ripped it up, turned it into — I don’t know what they hell they turned it into,” Wolkoff said, adding, “She could have been the voice about all these different programs as opposed to what it ends up being.”
AGallup pollshowed President Trump left office with his lowest approval rating ever, at 34 percent.
ACNN pollfound that Mrs. Trump’s approval rating was similarly low, with 47 percent of people saying they had an unfavorable view of the first lady right before she left office.
source: people.com
