Melania Trump is avoiding saying whether she will hit the campaign trail

When the former president cast his vote in the Florida primary on Tuesday, the former first lady was at his side.

This was notable for a number of reasons.

Former President Donald J. Trump has said for months that his wife, Melania, would join him on the campaign trail. And for months, Mrs. Trump remained absent from campaign events and victory celebrations — after Mr. Trump cruised to a victory on Super Tuesday, his wife did not join him on stage to greet supporters at Mar-a-Lago, their home in Palm Beach. , Fla.

Mrs. Trump is always more content to be a cipher to the curious public than to ask playful field questions, but Mrs. Trump did something out of character when she responded to someone who asked if she planned to attend more regularly in the future are.

“Stay tuned,” she said.

It was an answer, but not an answer.

(“That’s the answer she gives when she doesn’t want to commit to anything,” Stephanie Grisham, her former communications director who wrote a memoir about the Trump White House, said in a text message.)

Mrs. Trump, 53, has formally been a political spouse for nearly a decade, but she has shown little interest in campaigning despite her popularity as a surrogate for her husband.

Her public appearances in recent months have been sparse and not in service of her husband’s campaign.

One of her most notable was delivering a eulogy for her mother, Amalija Knavs, who died in January. In that rare speech, Mrs. Trump, who was so close to her mother that Mrs. Knavs and her husband, Viktor, often lived in a White House suite, described her mother as “a ray of light in the darkest days.” .”

Before that, Mrs. Trump, a naturalized U.S. citizen, attended a naturalization ceremony in December and told participants that citizenship means “actively participating in the democratic process and safeguarding our freedom.” (Mrs. Trump received an immigrant visa reserved for “individuals of extraordinary ability” in 2001, when she was a model, and the circumstances surrounding her immigration process came under scrutiny when she was first lady.)

And in November, she joined the other living first ladies at a memorial service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump told people gathered outside the polling station in Palm Beach that he had voted for himself. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for information about the former first lady’s vote.