President Donald Trump touched down in Dublin on Saturday, September 12, 2026. Two sons, a daughter-in-law and grandchildren came along, with a golf tournament waiting on the far side of the country. His wife was not in the traveling party, and the president volunteered the reason.
Business leaders at the U.S. ambassador’s residence heard from Trump on the first day of a two-day visit, and he was working his way through the representatives gathered in the room when he arrived at First Lady Melania Trump.
“My wife is here in spirit. She’s watching right now,” Trump said.
She had asked him to pass along a hello to people she is friendly with, he said, gesturing toward U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Edward Walsh and his wife, Lynn. What came next cracked up the room.
“I said, ‘Well, why don’t you come with me?’ She said, ‘Well, it’s a seven-hour trip. Maybe I’m not that friendly,’” Trump continued.
“I said, ‘Put on a Make America Great Again hat and come on. Let’s go.’ But, uh, she sends her regards.”
Family stayed on his mind. His son Donald Trump Jr. did make the trip, and married Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in May; the president turned to him next. “He’s calmed down so much, you know. It’s amazing,” Trump said. “No, it’s a good sign. He’s like a different human being. He had a lot of energy. Now he’s a little less energy. That’s a good thing.”
Who Made the Ireland Trip
The plane was hardly empty. Sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. flew over. White House Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley joined them. White House Appointments Secretary Natalie Harp, 35, came too, and she was among the group that shook hands with Irish President Catherine Connolly. At the September 12 arrival at Áras an Uachtaráin, Harp stood at the end of the receiving line while Trump introduced Connolly to Donald Trump Jr., Bettina Anderson and his children.
Connolly welcomed the president at an arrival ceremony where he inspected an honor guard. She then handed him a set of gifts that included a volume by the late Irish poet Michael Longley containing the sonnet “Ceasefire.” In Dublin, Trump also met Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, then flew across the country to his golf resort on the Atlantic coast at Doonbeg, County Clare, for the Irish Open. The visit ran September 12-13.
That Truth Social Hat Post
Headwear and his wife had come up before the Make America Great Again hat line. In early July, similar hats worn by Melania Trump and former First Lady Hillary Clinton appeared in a side-by-side image the president put on Truth Social. Hers was the look she wore at Trump’s 2025 inauguration; Clinton’s came from the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. The pairing came with no explanation from him. The post drew plenty of replies and more than 12,000 likes.
“Hillary was first lady 30 years ago, idiot. Let’s check in with Melania in 30 years and see if she can still pull off this outfit. Wonder who she’ll be married to then,” one user wrote on X.
What the First Lady Has Been Doing
Melania Trump, 56, logged 38 days of public appearances in 2026 through late July, according to an analysis published in August — a lighter pace than recent predecessors. Michelle Obama delivered 130 speeches in her first 18 months in the role, while Jill Biden made 43 public appearances in a comparable period. Ireland was not the only event she took a pass on, either: she also skipped the two-day Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas earlier in September.
A report published September 15 found that she made no public appearances at all during a 32-day stretch running from mid-July to mid-August.
She resurfaced on August 20 at a White House Rose Garden event for her Fostering the Future initiative, where a deadpan opener got the crowd laughing. “I heard you missed me. Here I am,” she said. Fox Corporation and IndyCar each contributed $1 million toward scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University, bringing the program to 26 colleges and universities.
On September 11 she stood beside the president at the Pentagon for the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, one day before he left for Ireland.
Three days after the Dublin routine, on Tuesday, September 15, she turned up at Mountain View Elementary School in Jefferson, N.C., a rural Ashe County school that leans hard into artificial intelligence, robotics and engineering. “I think they need to learn we need to lead,” she said of the technology. “Of course they need to be vigilant as well. But this is our future.” She also told the students: “Dream big and use these AI tools to build something never created before. Maybe one of you will create the next great robot.” She sat in on a group building chatbots to explore career ideas, watched the 3D printers run and took a turn steering the robotic arms. One 11-year-old student asked for a hug and got several.
The giveaway she announced before leaving came through her BE BEST Fostering the Future initiative alongside NVIDIA and StudyFetch: AI literacy training licenses for 1,500 Ashe County students, plus 100 robotics learning kits powered by Jetson Nano bound for Mountain View Elementary and other district schools. A hand-painted banner hung on a wall of the gym: “Welcome to Ashe County 1st Lady Melania Trump!”
Viewers at home did not get all of it. Fox News cut away mid-speech on September 15, while she was talking about the county’s rebound from Hurricane Helene and her AI initiatives. “Alright, we’re pulling away from this,” anchor Harris Faulkner said, and the network switched to coverage of the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial.
No seven-hour flight had been required. She was there in person, in a room full of robots.
