First Lady Melania Trump, 56, said on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, that family time in the Trump household is “suffering,” and suggested that her son, Barron Trump, now 20, may not mind seeing less of her.
“It’s less and less the family time. It’s suffering because of it,” she told co-host Taylor Riggs. “But that’s OK. We are here to work, to do a good job, and that’s what matters. And Barron is already a young man, so sometimes he’s maybe even happy that, you know, I just want to do my stuff. And that’s OK.”
Accounts of the venue differ. One account places the remarks on Fox Business’ “The Big Money Show,” where Riggs is a co-host; Yahoo reports place the same quotes on a Sept. 23 appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
The interview was built around IMPERIA, a new platform for women business leaders, founders and investors. She launched it that morning by ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and in the Fox clip she says women are at the center of the economy.
Riggs asked whether the family still gathered for Sunday night dinners, or whether the first lady tried to see Barron when she could. “It’s good to schedule, right?” she said. “It’s always good because everybody’s so busy.” She said her husband is sometimes in the Oval Office until 9:30 at night, and that she does not wait for him to eat. “You don’t, because he’s busy. I’m busy too,” she said.
The Terms She Set
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, her husband seemed to have struck an arrangement with Melania Trump: Washington would not hold her, and Barron would come before her duties as first lady. Twenty months later, that deal looks very different, and by her own account it is work that matters most.
She set out the terms publicly on “Fox & Friends” on Jan. 13, 2025, a week before her husband’s second inauguration. “I will be in the White House. And when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York. When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach,” she said. “My first priority is to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife.”
New York University’s Stern School of Business had Barron in its freshman class at the time. Her message left no doubt that he, rather than the East Wing, would take her attention. The approach echoed her husband’s first stint in office: Barron had a school year left to finish in New York in 2017, so she lingered there for nearly five months after Trump moved into the White House.
In January 2026, promoting her Amazon documentary, she told then-host Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business: “You need to be there for a child nonstop, especially when they need you, especially at that age that Barron is.” Barron was 19 at the time. He is now a junior at NYU.
Questions About Her Account
In a separate Sept. 23 interview, which Yahoo reports place on “Fox & Friends,” Melania Trump addressed rumors of conflict with her husband. “Sometimes he doesn’t want to hear it, what I tell him, but that’s OK. I always say the truth,” she said. Of the president, she said: “He has a lot on his plate. It’s very different, what’s going on around the world now. But I think he’s doing the best that he can. He’s, from morning until evening, nonstop working.”
Political commentator David Pakman challenged that account in a YouTube video released Sept. 27, asking, “How would Melania know that Trump is working from morning until evening?” He said she is “completely estranged” from Trump and sleeps in a different bedroom when they are in the same place.
The Daily Beast has reported that the president lives at the White House while the first lady is believed to pass most of her days in New York City. Michael Wolff, a Trump biographer, said in late August that she had “abdicated” the traditional role of first lady. He went further in a post published Aug. 31 on his Substack, claiming she “may not have spent a single night at the White House” since her husband returned to office. White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Wolff “a professional scumbag and serial liar.”
Just 38 days of public appearances in 2026 were all the Daily Beast could count in an analysis published in August. Nobody saw her between the FIFA World Cup final on July 19 and a Rose Garden event on Aug. 20, and there she told the crowd: “I heard you missed me. Here I am.”
Barron Out of View
Barron had transferred to NYU’s Washington, D.C., academic center and moved into the White House, People and the New York Post reported in 2025. Confirmation of the move came from neither NYU nor the White House.
In August, the New York Post reported that Barron had become increasingly withdrawn from view. One source said, “He doesn’t go out,” and described him as “pretty reclusive.” Propaganda videos from Iranian state media that appeared to threaten his life were tied to his retreat by that report, which also cited a reported $10 million bounty.
The president’s youngest son has also faced criticism this year over his apparent closeness to members of the controversial “manosphere,” including Andrew Tate, whom The Daily Beast describes as a suspected rapist and sex trafficker. The outlet cites a New York Times report that Barron “admired” Tate, 39.
Barron was affected by the murder of Charlie Kirk and phoned his father in a “state of distress,” according to “Regime Change,” a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. “This is what happens when you go out there,” he told his father, according to the book. The same Daily Beast account cites an assassination attempt against the president at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April 2026.
