First Lady Melania Trump, 56, said family time in the Trump household is shrinking, and she suggested her 20-year-old son, Barron Trump, does not mind the distance. The first lady made the candid remarks on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, during an appearance on Fox Business’ “The Big Money Show.”
“It’s less and less the family time. It’s suffering because of it,” she said. “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.”
Her answer began with logistics. “It’s good to schedule, right?” she said, adding that everybody is busy these days. The president, by her account, sometimes stays at work in the Oval Office until 9:30 at night. Dinner does not wait for him, she said, because his schedule is full and hers is too.
Praise came first from co-host Taylor Riggs, who described the 56-year-old first lady as an inspiration to young mothers juggling businesses, charities, state dinners and a family all at the same time. Riggs then asked what advice she would offer mothers who feel stretched thin, and whether Sunday night dinners still bring the Trumps together.
Interview Built Around Imperia
Fox Business’ own page for the appearance frames the interview around Imperia, a new Melania Trump initiative to connect and empower women business leaders, CEOs, founders and investors. The network’s summary says she “states that women are at the center of the economy and must build ownership together.” The clip runs 15:04.
Barron’s Move Back Home
Rather than stay on the school’s Manhattan campus, Barron Trump chose last year to take his New York University (NYU) classes at the school’s academic center in Washington, D.C., and to live again with his parents. The choice put him under the same roof as the household his mother now describes as pulled in different directions by work. He has begun his junior year at NYU.
In January 2026, Melania Trump struck a different note with now-ousted Fox host Maria Bartiromo. “You need to be there for a child nonstop, especially when they need you, especially at that age that Barron is,” she said. Her son was 19 at the time.
Nothing in the Fox Business interview walked back the picture she painted of a schedule leaving less and less room for the dinner table.
Scrutiny of the Household
Critics have spent this year questioning the apparent closeness between the president’s youngest son and figures in the controversial “manosphere,” among them Andrew Tate, 39, a suspected rapist and sex trafficker. Reporting last year by The New York Times said Barron Trump “admired” Tate and spoke with him by phone while being fitted for a suit. A conversation with Barron Trump after the Butler, Pa., assassination attempt against his father in July 2024 was something Tate himself described in 2024. Melania Trump has been in Washington less often than usual this year, and one stretch of the summer passed without a single public appearance from her for a full month.
That comes amid growing scrutiny of her husband’s closeness to a 35-year-old aide to the president, Natalie Harp. Most of her time, the first lady is believed to spend in New York City; the White House is where President Donald Trump lives, separately.
As of Sept. 25, reporting notes that Melania and Donald Trump were recently seen together at the UN General Assembly in New York, where the president gave the first lady a shout-out during his speech. The same reporting says she allowed CNN to cover her at the assembly despite a media ban her husband imposed.
What the Documentary Showed
The full title of the documentary is “Melania: 20 Days to History.” She co-produced the film with director Brett Ratner, Amazon MGM Studios distributed it, and U.S. theaters began showing it on Friday, Jan. 30. Accusations of sexual misconduct in 2017, which he has denied, had kept Ratner off a project until this one, his first since.
Watchdog groups and critics of the administration went after the film’s financing and argued the timing of its release was insensitive, coming as mass protests swelled in Minneapolis over two fatal shootings by federal agents.
Trump Tower in New York and Mar-a-Lago in Florida host much of the documentary, which traces the days before the January 2025 inauguration. Her mother, Amalija Knavs, died in January 2024, and that loss anchors the film’s most personal stretch. Cameras follow her to former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in Washington on Jan. 9, 2025 — the anniversary of that death — and afterward to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, where she lights a candle in her mother’s honor.
She reveals during a car ride that Michael Jackson is her favorite musician, and “Billie Jean” plays twice over the course of the film. Youth anxiety and social media use come up when she and Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, share their worries on a video call between the two women.
