Melania Trump Attended Gold Star Event

From Town & Country

After nearly a month out of the public eye, Melania Trump attended a White House event honoring Gold Star military families last evening. The party, which is similar to one the first couple threw last year, marked her first official appearance since May 10, when she and President Trump traveled to Andrews Air Force Base to welcome home Americans who had been held captive in North Korea.

Before last night, Melania hadn't been seen publicly in 24 days now, and let's just say the First Lady's absence didn't go unnoticed. Fueling speculation regarding her lack of public appearances, the event was closed to the press.

But before people claim she didn't attend at all, there were a few photos of her at the reception. See them in tweets below.

Over the past few weeks, the First Lady's lack of a public presence has spawned multiple articles with headlines in the vein of "Where's Melania?" Officially, Melania, 48, has been recovering from a medical procedure. On May 14, she "underwent an embolization procedure to treat a benign kidney condition" according to a statement from her office. She had spent almost five days at Walter Reed Hospital, and was visited by her husband several times.

The conspiracy theories started early, in part because this procedure is typically done on an outpatient basis. "You go in, you have it done, you lie in bed for a while to keep the blood vessel from bleeding and then you go home," Dr. Eleanor D. Lederer, a professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and past president of the American Society of Nephrology, told the New York Times.

It was initially announced that Melania would be in the hospital for two or three days, and the White House offered no comment on why her time in the hospital was significantly longer. She returned to the White House on Saturday May 19. Her husband greeted her with a tweet:

Furthering the conspiracy theories was a rather strange tweet on May 30 from the official FLOTUS account, which read, "I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I'm doing. Rest assured, I'm here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people!"

The next day, June 1, the President and his children Ivanka, Don Jr., and Tiffany left for Camp David.

This past weekend, it was announced that Melania will not attend Trump's planned summit with North Korea in Singapore on June 12 or the G7 summit on June 8 and 9 in Quebec, despite having gone to the meeting of world leaders last year. And it is unclear what work has been done on the First Lady's new "Be Best" campaign to raise awareness for children's issues in recent weeks. Melania announced the new initiative on May 7, right before she made herself scarce.

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