How Two First Ladies Weathered a Most Unusual Presidential Transition
Jill Biden wanted to keep teaching. Melania Trump just wanted to go home. In nearly every way, the two women are a study in contrasts in their approach to the role of first lady.
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The incoming first lady was arguing with her husband about whether she could keep working as an English professor, bucking concerns that it would be too much for her to handle. The outgoing first lady had taken to wearing terry cloth bathrobes during the day and sorting through an office aides referred to as her “swag room,” a locked room filled with key chains, crystal bookends and other trinkets from her time at the White House.
The winter of 2021 was a most unusual transition period for Jill Biden and Melania Trump, two first ladies who have pushed the boundaries of a much scrutinized, frequently criticized and often underestimated role in American politics.
As Dr. Biden worked toward becoming the first woman to keep a career while first lady, her predecessor, Melania Trump, was in Washington completing a similarly unorthodox (though drastically different) tenure. Over four years, Mrs. Trump showed how pretty much every aspect of being first lady, which carries no salary and no formal job description, is optional.
In nearly every way, the two women are a study in contrasts: Dr. Biden shaped the role in a way that allowed her to preserve her career and identity, while Mrs. Trump spent four years flouting many of the expectations about what a modern first lady should be.
In the process, they expanded the possibilities for the first spouses who follow them.
This year, during what is already a combative presidential campaign, the two women — and their influence over their husbands — will again become a focus of enormous public interest.
‘The third rail’
For Dr. Biden, becoming first lady was the honor of a lifetime. It just wasn’t her day job.
In the weeks after her husband won the presidency, Dr. Biden’s path back to the classroom at Northern Virginia Community College — she’d taken a leave of absence to help her husband campaign — was rockier than publicly known. She had told reporters during the campaign that she planned to continue teaching. But behind the scenes, she was still working to quell her husband’s concerns.
“Baby,” Mr. Biden said gently, using a pet name his wife dislikes, as they huddled with senior advisers during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania in October of 2020.
He reminded her that there were still questions about whether she could earn a salary without violating ethics laws, according to two people with direct knowledge of the exchange. He wondered aloud if it wasn’t all too much to take on.
She listened patiently, though plans to return to the classroom were soon underway. Days later, Anthony Bernal, her most senior aide, reached out to campus advisers at the school.
“The professor MUST teach,” Mr. Bernal, a former child actor who has been close to Dr. Biden’s side since the 2008 campaign, wrote in an email to Jimmie McClellan, a dean at the school, on Oct. 30, 2020.
But the matter was still not fully settled until weeks after Mr. Biden won the election. Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary, described it as a “third rail” topic.
The issue came to a head when the Bidens joined a call to prepare for a joint appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which aired on Dec. 17, 2020. The incoming first couple was strategizing with a group of senior aides, including Ron Klain, a longtime adviser and Mr. Biden’s first White House chief of staff; Anita Dunn, who managed communications for the campaign; and Mike Donilon, a senior adviser and a longtime Biden whisperer.
On that call, according to several people involved, Dr. Biden was asked if she planned to teach full-time. Her answer was matter-of-fact: “Yep.”
At that point, the president-elect chimed in: You are? he asked, according to two people who heard the exchange.
Dr. Biden took a leave of absence to help her husband campaign for the presidency, but after his win, she laid plans to return to teaching full time.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Mr. Biden wanted to know how many credits — only a handful, right?
She responded that she was teaching 15 credits. A full course load.
Mr. Biden said that he was not aware that she’d be teaching so much.
“Joe, I told you this,” she said.
Her response ended that (slightly awkward, one aide remembers) portion of the call.
By this point, Dr. Biden had already spent weeks learning how to ramp up for online teaching, necessary during the Covid era. “I took the training, but it is hard stuff,” she emailed to a colleague on Jan. 3, 2021.
Officials at Northern Virginia Community College, working with White House lawyers, eventually arranged for her to be paid out of a nonprofit fund-raising account affiliated with the school.
By Inauguration Day, it was clear: She was going to keep her day job.
“Of course, you know, people around me said, ‘No, no, you can never do it,’” Dr. Biden recalled, reflecting on the process in a later interview.
“And I said, ‘I’m going to do it. So figure it out.’”
‘Something bad happened’
On Jan. 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump wanted to stay in the White House.
But his wife just wanted to go home.
For months, Mrs. Trump had taken to walking around the Executive Residence in hotel-style terry cloth robes. Throughout her husband’s presidency, she often perched on the bed in his room to listen to or join in on his calls with advisers and allies, Stephanie Grisham, Mrs. Trump’s former press secretary, said in an interview.
Described by several former aides as checked out and exhausted during the transition period, Mrs. Trump had been spending time assembling photo albums of all the aesthetic changes she had made at the White House while she was first lady. (“All she cared about was those photo albums,” Ms. Grisham said, using an expletive to describe the albums.) Mrs. Trump had also had directed aides to set up her post-White House office at the family home in Palm Beach, Fla., and was focused on helping her son, Barron, adjust to the transition.
According to several former aides, Mrs. Trump had visited the East Wing, where the first lady has an official office and staff, so infrequently that her empty office had been converted into a gift-wrapping room. The White House Military Office, sensing an opportunity to claim coveted White House territory, converted part of the unused East Wing into a secure communications facility.
Mrs. Trump showed that many aspects of being first lady — a role with no salary and no formal job description — are optional. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
In the days before the attack on the Capitol, Mrs. Trump had been cataloging the contents of her swag room, including the small mementos and gifts that she would hand out to friends and allies of the Trump family. An aide traveled back and forth to the Executive Residence with a binder listing the current inventory, according to two former Trump White House officials.
Mrs. Trump had also started repeating a version of her husband’s false belief that he had actually won the election, telling her associates that “something bad” had happened.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Ms. Grisham finally realized that her boss was much more likely to mirror her husband’s beliefs and grievances than she was to challenge them. As the mob descended on the Capitol, Ms. Grisham made a last-ditch effort, texting Mrs. Trump to ask if she wanted to denounce the violence that was unfolding a mile away.
“Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?” Grisham asked her at 1:25 p.m. that day, around the time a mob had overtaken the back steps of the Capitol.
The reply was a definitive “no.” Mrs. Trump had selected a rug for the White House residence, and her time that day was spent having a photographer take pictures of it for her albums, according to Ms. Grisham, who had knowledge of her schedule. Ms. Grisham resigned later that day.
When the Trumps left the White House weeks later, on the morning of Jan. 20, 2021, Mrs. Trump was dressed in a black suit and carrying an Hermès Birkin bag. By the time the couple touched down in Palm Beach, Mrs. Trump, known for designer clothes tailored to fit her figure, had changed into a loose and billowing patterned dress.
That afternoon, the first lady’s sunglasses were on. She was even wearing flats. For a woman who had spent four years communicating to Americans through the clothes she wore, this time the message was unmistakable. It was the fashion equivalent of an out-of-office reply.
A spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump, who was not authorized to speak publicly about internal matters, said that the account shared by Ms. Grisham and other officials about the former first lady’s final days in office amounted to “misinformation.”
A spokeswoman for Dr. Biden had no comment.
One last act of tradition
For as little as she seemed to embrace tradition by the end of her time in the White House, Mrs. Trump did adhere to one final act modeled by first ladies before her: She left a note wishing her successor good luck.
The letter contained no reflections or advice. In an interview in the Biden family home in Rehoboth, Del., in October 2022, Dr. Biden described it as a “typical good-luck letter.” She said she didn’t appreciate that it was typed and not handwritten.
“I do a lot of correspondence,” Dr. Biden said of her penchant for writing notes in her own hand. “I know how important it is.”
Her dislike of the Trump family runs deep, but she has reached out to Mrs. Trump at least once since taking office, according to several people familiar with their correspondence.
In April 2021, Dr. Biden sent Mrs. Trump a birthday card. That June, Mrs. Trump returned the favor, sending a card to Dr. Biden when she turned 70.
These small gestures were both curious and counterintuitive, given how deeply the ideological battle lines run between the parties — and between the Trump and Biden families in particular. But two women with very little in common have stayed in communication because of the strange, singular, and increasingly anachronistic nature of the role they have shared.
Steve Eder contributed reporting from New York.
