First Lady Melania Trump will not join President Donald Trump in Dallas for the first-ever midterm convention of the Republican National Committee (RNC) on September 9 and 10, 2026, a White House official told The Independent on Friday, September 4.
The president will appear both evenings at the American Airlines Center and deliver the keynote address on the second night, with Vice President JD Vance speaking on the opening night. A White House official had first confirmed the first lady’s plans on Thursday, September 3, to the Washington Examiner.
The RNC has promoted the gathering as a launchpad for the November 3 elections. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said the program would walk Americans through the party’s agenda and what is at stake in November, with every hour carrying its own theme, message and voices. The committee says 109 items and speakers are planned across the two nights.
Dozens of Republicans Also Skipping
The first lady is far from alone in taking a pass. At least 45 GOP lawmakers told Politico they will not attend, out of roughly 70 Republican candidates and members interviewed. Their explanations ranged from prior commitments — a wedding, campus visits with teenage daughters, a dove hunt — to a conviction that their time is better spent campaigning at home. Others balked at the $25,000 entrance fee.
“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention, but I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing,” Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) told the outlet.
Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) and Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) each told Politico they would not be there, and Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) was also reported to be out. All three are running for reelection. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is skipping as well. One House Republican dismissed the event to Politico as “a waste of time” and “a mess,” arguing that independent voters are neither attending nor watching.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has taken the opposite tack, saying he has been promoting the convention everywhere and that his colleagues must each make their own decision, while predicting that those who do come will have a great time.
Steep Price Tags and Bad Timing
Access to the president in Dallas carries a premium: a reported $88,600 for a photo opportunity and $250,000 for roundtable appearances, with Vance available for considerably less. The party has also charged as much as $20,000 for delegate status at the event, which has picked up the nickname “Trump-a-Palooza.”
The timing poses problems, too. The two evenings run up against the opening two games of the National Football League (NFL) season, and the convention closes one day before the nation observes the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Originally booked for a single night, Trump put himself on both; a party official told Reuters that he wanted to set the tone for the entire convention.
On “Morning Joe,” MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire argued that the scheduling conflict would deprive Trump of the viewership he was after. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times concurred, noting that some in the president’s orbit privately acknowledge it was a mistake made because they had not been paying attention.
A First Lady Rarely Seen
The first lady’s choice is consistent with how sparingly she has appeared in public since her husband’s second term began. One analysis tallied 38 days on which she had been seen publicly as of early August, a figure that rose to 40 by September 4. Her latest appearance was the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington on August 23, after which the White House was reported to have cropped Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant, out of its own video of the couple at the race.
Earlier, on August 20, she delivered remarks in the Rose Garden about the expansion of her Fostering the Future Initiative, marking the first time she had appeared with the president since the FIFA World Cup final in New Jersey on July 19. “I heard you missed me,” she joked to reporters. The first lady also skipped the rearranged White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24 and the July 28 funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally.
Her reticence on the campaign trail is long established. Her only significant appearance of the 2024 race came on the closing night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump’s first appearance after he was struck in the right ear by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania. She also spoke at the 2016 convention, where she was accused of plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s 2008 address; her speechwriter later took the blame.
She has hardly been invisible in other respects. She starred in a $40 million Amazon documentary, held a surprise news conference denying any past association with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and rebuked late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over an on-air remark about the president. She championed the bipartisan Take It Down Act targeting revenge porn and explicit deepfakes, and she opened back-channel talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at returning captured Ukrainian children. Marc Beckman, an adviser to the first lady, has called her the most consequential first lady in American history.
Trump heads to Dallas with his approval rating in the low 30s, weighed down by the continuing war with Iran, an affordability crisis and a reignited trade fight with Canada. Democrats opted against holding a midterm convention of their own — and when the president takes the stage in Dallas on September 9, his wife will not be in the arena.
