Melania Trump's possible incentive for joining Trump and Natalie Harp at car race

A former deputy press secretary for Donald Trump believes that Melania Trump has an incentive for recently ending her long and mysterious absence from the public spotlight, including when she was seen with her husband and his controversial aide Natalie Harp at Sunday’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix car race in Washington, D.C.

Sarah Matthews said in an interview Sunday that the first lady is probably getting paid to show up at certain events, and her rate for an appearance may “have gone up” amid heightened scrutiny around Harp’s constant presence in the 80-year-old president’s life, including during sensitive international travel, the Daily Beast reported.

“We know too that — it’s been reported — that Melania gets paid for showing up at events when they were on the campaign trail, which is crazy to think that you have to pay your own wife to show up somewhere,” said Matthews, who was press secretary during Trump’s first administration and resigned following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Matthews was speaking on the MeidasTouch’s On Sunday with Jack Cocchiarella podcast. She painted a picture of a checked-out first lady as well as a wife, 56, who is understandably embarrassed by all the reports about her husband’s relationship with a much younger, 35-year-old aide, whose recently leaked letters to the president revealed her deep adoration for him.

“I wonder if her rate has gone up after all this news,” Matthews said on the podcast. “I’m sure (Melania) doesn’t like any of this being out there, whether or not there is something inappropriate going on between Trump and Natalie Harp. I don’t think so (but) I think it’s a bizarre relationship. I can guarantee she doesn’t like that being out there in the news.”

After more than a month away from the public eye, Melania Trump was finally seen again at a White House event last Thursday — just her 40th public appearance in all of 2026, as the Daily Beast reported. The first lady was there to tout the expansion of her Fostering the Future Initiative, and even joked about not being around much.

“I heard you missed me. Here I am,” the Slovenian former model said. “Here I am!”

Matthews said Melania Trump may have wanted to make an appearance on behalf of the initiative because she is passionate about improving the lives of foster children. Then again, Matthews also thought the timing of her re-emergence in public “was suspect.”

On Sunday, Melania Trump joined her husband at Freedom 250 Grand Prix, an IndyCar race around the National Mall and the streets of the capital, which drew military flyovers and thousands of people. During the event, the president and first lady took a ceremonious lap in Trump’s armored car, nicknamed “The Beast,” as crowds cheered and chanted “U.S.A.,” NPR reported.

People online however shared a clip of the couple at the race and some speculated they were arguing, Newsweek reported.

Indeed, Harp also was at the race, “lurking,” the Daily Beast reported. She was seen in the stands, chatting with Trump’s second son, Eric.

In the past month, Melania Trump has skipped out on attending high-profile events in the nation’s capital with her husband, including the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24 and the funeral of his personal friend and political ally Sen. Lindsey Graham on July 28, the Daily Beast reported

Harp is a big reason Melania Trump has stayed away from such events, Trump biographer Michael Wolff reported, according to the Daily Beast. The first lady is locked in a “secret power struggle” with Harp, and her “central presence” in Trump’s life also explains why she rarely appeared alongside him during the 2024 presidential campaign, Wolff also said. Overall, Melania Trump has dropped all pretense of fulfilling the traditional duties of a first lady, Wolff said.

In her interview Sunday, Matthews said that Melania Trump also was an elusive figure during Trump’s first term and during his 2020 campaign.

“When I was working on the campaign for a year and then at the White House for the last seven months of the first admin, I met the vice president, I met almost every Cabinet official. I met members of the first family; I met all of them at one point or another. The only person I never met was Melania Trump,” Matthews said.

“I never met the first lady, even though I was the deputy spokesperson for the president on his campaign and in the White House,” Matthews also said. “That kind of sums it up, where it was this known thing that she was just not around, and she didn’t want to be around.”

As for Matthew’s assertion that Melania Trump is supposedly getting paid to show up at occasional events with her husband, it has previously been reported that she has leveraged her position as first lady and as Trump’s wife to gain financially.

In 2023, Page Six reported that Melania Trump had quietly renegotiated the terms of her prenuptial agreement to ensure lifelong financial security for her and her son Barron. At the time, Trump was running for president a third time while also facing significant legal troubles, including dozens of criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions. (Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York, while federal cases and a Georgia case against him were dismissed or unraveled after he was reelected in 2024.)

“This is at least the third time Melania has renegotiated the terms of her marital agreement,” a source told Page Six in 2023, while emphasizing that Melania Trump had no plans to leave her husband, whom she married in 2005.

One of those renegotiated settlements was detailed in the 2020 book “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump,” in which author Mary Jordan alleged that the former model renegotiated the couple’s prenup in early 2017, when she spent months delaying her move from Manhattan to the White House after Trump’s first inauguration.

“She wanted proof in writing that when it came to financial opportunities and inheritance, Barron would be treated as more of an equal to Trump’s oldest three children,” Jordan wrote, referring to Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, his children with his first wife, Ivana Trump. Trump also has a daughter, Tiffany, with second wife Marla Maples.

Matthews also echoed reports that Melania Trump has been a reluctant occupant of the White House, saying, “She didn’t want to stay at the White House. She thought the White House was old and falling apart, and she wanted to be in New York and do her own thing.”

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