Melania Trump set to team up with Usha Vance to visit troops in North Carolina

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — Melania Trump will join second lady Usha Vance Wednesday for a pre-Thanksgiving visit with North Carolina military families Wednesday, offering the latest signal that the first lady is more actively engaging with her role after a quiet start to her second term.

Trump and Vance are expected to participate in engagements with service members and their families at Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River. They will also deliver formal remarks at an aircraft hangar, according to the first lady’s office, and “show appreciation for those who serve this holiday season.”

The North Carolina trip will mark their first public joint appearance without their husbands 10 months into the Trump-Vance administration.

It’s unclear how much the two women have substantively engaged with each other behind the scenes, though the Vances hosted the Trumps at the Naval Observatory for dinner last month, spending about an hour and a half at the vice presidential residence. The first lady’s office declined to respond to CNN’s inquiries about their relationship.

Vance, a former high-powered lawyer, is navigating the delicate dynamic of being a top figurehead in a new administration alongside the first lady, who has taken her own approach to the spousal role.

The second lady has joined her husband on key trips across the country and abroad as she has quietly promoted a cause of children’s literacy, all while transitioning three small children to a life under the microscope.

Trump, meanwhile, took a more hands-off approach to her role, spending most of her time in the first months of the president’s second term away from the White House in New York or Palm Beach, Florida, often disappearing for weeks between public appearances.

She has a much smaller staff compared with her first term. Though she was an active steward of White House preservation during her husband’s first term, she has left many of those decision to the president this time around, culminating dramatically last month with the demolition of the East Wing, which has served as headquarters for presidential spouses since the Carter administration.

But recently, the first lady has returned to public view with a series of engagements on a range of topics.

Trump has held events advocating for children’s well-being and artificial intelligence safety, launching a global coalition on the issue called “Fostering the Future Together.” She joined the president as he signed an executive order last week on a (unrelated) “Fostering the Future” initiative for children in foster care. And she back-channeled with Russian President Vladimir Putin on releasing allegedly abducted Ukrainian children with mixed results.

It’s unclear why the first lady is choosing to reemerge now, and her office declined to respond to questions on whether this might portend a more active role. Trump recently indicated that the multimillion-dollar deal she signed with Amazon for an eponymous documentary highlighting her return to the White House had taken up much of her attention this year.

“The silver screen and I have been in deep conversation lately. You may have heard the news — I produced a new film with Amazon MGM named ‘Melania,’” Trump said earlier this month in remarks accepting Fox Nation’s “Patriot of the Year” award.

Trump said the idea for the “first-of-its-kind project” came to her soon after her husband was reelected. She described it as “capturing the 20 days of my life before the inauguration, 20 intense days of transformation from private citizen to first lady, balancing my business, my philanthropy, fostering the future, building my East Wing team and the White House staff, and, of course, caring for my family.”

Trump said the documentary, which will be released in January, “provides a snapshot into a defining moment in history.”

The “Melania” documentary will be directed by Brett Ratner and marks the filmmaker’s first major project since 2017, when he was accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women. Ratner has denied the allegations.

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