First Lady Melania Trump will make solo appearances during President Donald Trump's second state visit to the United Kingdom this week, and no other Trump family members will attend the royal events, a White House spokesperson confirmed.
The president and first lady arrived in the U.K. on Tuesday for a multi-day program that includes a joint day of official events followed by separate engagements for Melania with members of the royal family. The White House confirmed that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who accompanied the president and first lady in 2019, will not be part of the visit this year.
Melania is scheduled to meet the Queen on Thursday and to join the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, at the King's estate in Windsor, according to published travel plans. Observers who spoke to the Daily Mail suggested the itinerary will give the first lady opportunities for high-profile solo appearances, a characterization some outlets described as “Peak Melania.”
Accounts in U.S. and British media revisited a widely reported pattern of tension between Melania and her stepdaughter, Ivanka, during the administration's first term. Mary Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicler of the first lady, told the Daily Mail that "the stepchildren are gone," and that Melania had felt "enormous animosity" toward Ivanka while both were active in Washington.
Those tensions have been detailed in memoirs and press accounts. Stephanie Grisham, a former White House chief of staff and press secretary to the first lady, wrote about a clash surrounding the 2019 state visit in which Ivanka and Jared lobbied to appear alongside the president and first lady at a Buckingham Palace welcome ceremony. Grisham said Melania, who she described as a stickler for protocol, protested that the welcome should feature only the president and the first lady.
Grisham's memoir recounts that Melania and her staff privately nicknamed Ivanka "the princess" because of her behavior and that the first lady resisted what she perceived as Ivanka and Jared Kushner asserting a quasi-official family role. Photographs from the 2019 visit show Ivanka and Jared looking out from a palace window as the presidential helicopter landed on the palace grounds; other family members were present at the state banquet that year.
Melania has written about the 2019 visit in a 2024 memoir, describing formal moments with royal hosts and lighter personal interactions with members of the British royal family. In that account she praised Prince Charles's interest in conservation and recounted a spontaneous laugh with the then-Queen and the Duchess of Cornwall when a gust of wind ruffled her hat during a ceremonial arrival.
Reporting on internal White House dynamics has not been uniform. Therese Burch, a former volunteer staffer who coordinated elements of the 2019 state visit, told the Daily Mail in 2021 that Ivanka and Jared were not barred from any state visit events. Burch called some later portrayals of exclusions inaccurate. The first lady's office and representatives for Ivanka and Jared Kushner did not respond to requests for comment published alongside the recent reporting.
The relationship between Melania and Ivanka was a recurring theme in coverage of the early Trump White House. Melania delayed her permanent move from Manhattan to Washington, D.C., until the summer of 2017 so her son Barron could finish the school year; during that interim the Kushners lived in the capital and Ivanka took a White House office. Some accounts said Ivanka had proposed rebranding the traditional Office of the First Lady as an "Office of the First Family," a suggestion that reportedly upset Melania.
Ivanka, the president's second child with his first wife, Ivana, has since stepped back from government roles and is largely absent from the administration's official travel this week. Published profiles note that she has focused on private life and business pursuits since leaving the White House.
The White House confirmation that no Trump family members other than the first lady will attend the state visit events underscores a different public composition from 2019, when several adult Trump children were included in parts of the program. The current delegation aims to follow established diplomatic protocol, according to the administration’s scheduling and the White House statement.
The visit marks the second state visit to the U.K. for the Trumps and includes formal ceremonies at Buckingham Palace and engagements at Windsor. It follows a pattern in which first families often calibrate who participates in ceremonial and social elements of state-level diplomacy. Melania's separate engagements with royal hosts are scheduled to proceed without other Trump family members in the official party.
Representatives for the first lady did not issue additional comment beyond the White House confirmation. The British palace released standard acknowledgments of the itinerary but did not comment on family composition. Observers and biographers cited in recent reports said the arrangement reflects both procedural preferences and personal dynamics recounted in memoirs and press accounts from the administration's earlier years.